Clark Whitehouse was Tasered three times by the RCMP before he likely died of a cocaine overdose, a coroner and six jurors heard Monday in Whitehorse.

This week, more than 15 witnesses will be called to testify at a corner's inquest examining the circumstances of Whitehouse's death.

The 34-year-old former Whitehorse resident died while in RCMP custody on Sept. 28, 2003.

On that day, Whitehouse had aroused police suspicion by pulling off to the side of the South Klondike Highway. Two RCMP officers were investigating a police cruiser crash that had killed Heather Benson, who also died while in police custody.

(Benson, of Tagish, died after she had been arrested by Const. Jeff Monkman for the suspected cultivation of marijuana. On Sept. 27, 2003, Benson was thrown from the vehicle Monkman had been driving. She had not been wearing a seat belt.)

At first, Const. Paul Thalhofer and Const. Scott Wessell paid little attention to Whitehouse's black pickup, even though Thalhofer thought it was kind of strange that the truck hadn't passed them, the inquest heard Monday.

Thalhofer became even more suspicious when he looked up and the truck was gone, so he asked Wessell to go track down the vehicle

'He didn't go past us, so he had to be headed back to Whitehorse,' Thalhofer told coroner Sharon Hickey and the jury.

A while later, Thalhofer radioed Wessell, asking if he had found the truck. When Wessell said no, Thalhofer hopped into his own vehicle and headed back toward Whitehorse as well.

Eventually, Thalhofer came across the truck approaching the highway from a side road. The inquest heard that he observed the lone male inside the truck not wearing a seat belt.

Thalhofer also noted that the truck had a B.C. licence plate, which was something of a concern to him since he heard that drugs were being transported to Whitehorse in vehicles with B.C. plates.

The officer decided to pull Whitehouse over because of the seat belt infraction and to talk to him about the strange way he had stopped near the fatal accident scene.

Whitehouse did not pull over and a high-speed chase ensued. However, Thalhofer said neither of them went more than 120 kilometres per hour.

As the two cars sped down the South Klondike Highway, Thalhofer requested over the radio that other officers assist him by laying a spike belt across the highway.

But the belt wasn't necessary because Whitehouse turned off onto Lewes Lake Road.

'He signalled, so I thought he was going to pull over, but he changed his mind,' said Thalhofer.

As the two travelled down the Lewes Lake Road, Thalhofer observed that Whitehouse's side window was open.

'And he was making what I could only describe as bizarre hand gestures,' Thalhofer testified.

The car chase stopped when Whitehouse pulled into a dead-end driveway and Thalhofer blocked him in with his vehicle.

Whitehouse jumped out of his truck and a foot pursuit began through the bush, even though Thalhofer testified he had no idea who this person was, nor did the officer really have an idea of where he was.

Thalhofer decided to pull his gun as a safety precaution once he couldn't see Whitehouse's hands.

That's when Whitehouse started yelling at Thalhofer to shoot him, saying it was his day to die, the inquest heard.

Thalhofer decided he was dealing with a suicidal person and put his gun away. He then pulled out his Taser and fired.

Whitehouse went down as 50,000 volts of electricity travelled through his body. When the electric shock stopped, Whitehouse told the officer that the Taser had hurt.

'Yes, I know it hurts,' Thalhofer testified he told Whitehouse.

Thalhofer, himself, had been Tasered when he was trained to use the weapon.

'I feel you have a better respect if you know what it feels like,' Thalhofer told the inquest.

The officer then asked Whitehouse to lay a certain way with his hands behind his back, but when Whitehouse failed to comply, trying to get up, Thalhofer Tasered him again.

The line on the Taser broke, so Whitehouse didn't get the full five-second jolt.

Thalhofer had observed that Whitehouse had been carrying a baggy filled with a white chalky substance. When Whitehouse was Tasered the second time, the white substance flew all over the place.

The first two times Whitehouse was Tasered, Thalhofer was a slight distance away. The Taser shot two lines with barbs on the end that attached to Whitehouse's clothes.

When the line broke, Thalhofer had to move in and touch Whitehouse with the Taser for the third stun.

Thalhofer did this after Whitehouse grabbed a chunk of the white substance and took a bite from it, the officer told the inquest, being held in the Yukon Supreme Court room.

'I put my left knee into his back and touch-stunned him. I got a shock in my knee so I pulled away,' said Thalhofer. 'But I guess it must have worked because he put his hands behind his back and I handcuffed him.'

Thalhofer got Whitehouse's name and learned the man resided in Victoria.

The officer said Whitehouse seemed to be fine as the man continued to tell him about how much the Taser had hurt.

Thalhofer asked Whitehouse what he had eaten, but Whitehouse declined to say. The officer helped Whitehouse to his feet and the two began walking back to Thalhofer's car.

'He had no difficulty walking,' Thalhofer said about Whitehouse.

Three or four minutes later, back-up help arrived.

'It seemed like forever,' said Thalhofer.

Wessell was the first officer to arrive. He suggested that Whitehouse be placed in his vehicle, but Thalhofer insisted that Whitehouse remain with him.

When Lee Kirkpatrick, a territorial lawyer, asked Thalhofer to describe Whitehouse's demeanour throughout the whole incident, Thalhofer said: 'I wouldn't use the word violent' or combative'. He was resistant by not following my orders.'

Thalhofer instructed the other RCMP officers arriving at the scene about what evidence to gather.

Twelve minutes after the arrest, Thalhofer left with Whitehouse. His plan was to take him to Whitehorse General Hospital, as he didn't know what Whitehouse had ingested.

'It looked like chunks of chalk,' said Thalhofer.

While on their way back to Whitehorse, Thalhofer noticed that Whitehouse had collapsed onto the seat.

Thalhofer pulled over and opened the door to see drool coming out of Whitehouse's mouth. He checked to see if Whitehouse had a pulse, which he did.

Thalhofer saw that Whitehouse looked pale. When the officer yelled at him, Whitehouse did not respond, so Thalhofer dug his knuckles into Whitehouse's sternum in a way that would hurt him.

'Most people will respond,' Thalhofer said about the action. He said he did it to see if Whitehouse had been playing games.

Whitehouse didn't respond. In fact, he had stopped breathing, so Thalhofer popped the trunk to get a barrier masksomething that prevents mouth-to-mouth contact during CPR and prevents the exchange of fluids.

Thalhofer gave Whitehouse CPR for four minutes before Cpl. Rod Hamilton arrived at the scene. The two began administering two-man CPR and did so for 25 minutes until an ambulance arrived.

While Thalhofer was giving CPR, the barrier mask had ripped and Whitehouse's blood entered his mouth.

Because of that, Thalhofer had to go on antibiotics in case Whitehouse had hepatitis or HIV.

Thalhofer had to use the flimsy barrier mask instead of his usual, sturdier, CPR mask, because he had used that mask the night before on Benson.

During Thalhofer's 16 years of being a police officer, he only had to do CPR twice, two days in a row.

'It can be exhausting. You try to get the breathing right,' he said. Once people start CPR, he added, they can only stop if they are relieved or too tired to continue.

Both Benson and Whitehouse, the two Thalhofer administered CPR to, died.

'(Whitehouse) died on the side of the road,' said Thalhofer. 'Looking into his eyes, I believed he was dead.'

Thalhofer left the scene once the ambulance had arrived.

'They were getting ready to shock him,' Thalhofer had noted before he left.

After administering CPR, Thalhofer had to stretch his legs after kneeling in the same position for 20 minutes.

He told the inquest his legs had cramped up.

The incident in the back seat had supposedly been recorded by a video camera in Thalhofer's car. However, when the tape was viewed, there was nothing on it.

Thalhofer said he had problems with his video recorder. He said that several times prior to that incident, the recorder had failed to do its job, but at other times it had worked.

Before the incident, the recorder alerted Thalohofer that the tape heads in the player needed to be cleaned. Thalhofer didn't know if he had done that before encountering Whitehouse.

Clark Whitehouse's father, Jack Whitehouse, alleges that the tape was erased after it encountered a magnetic field.

In the Benson death the day before, the key part of Monkman's in-car video, which recorded her death, was destroyed before the officer's trial.

Grant Fredericks, a forensic video expert, said that tape had been stretched after the pause button had been used repeatedly.

Kirkpatrick asked Thalhofer if he could have let Whitehouse run away.

Thalhofer said, 'My job is to enforce the law and catch the people who are not following the law. And that is what I was doing that day.'

When an RCMP officer deals with a death on the job, he or she is supposed to receive a stress debriefing. To this day, Thalhofer never received one.

Dr. Stuart Huckin, a Vancouver-based toxicologist, told the inquest that Whitehouse had ingested four times the lethal limit of cocaine the day he died.

Huckin had analyzed Whitehouse's blood after his death. He'd found it to contain 41 milligrams of cocaine, which is the fifth-highest dose of cocaine Huckin has seen in a human being after analyzing about 1,000 other cocaine deaths.

Huckin described Whitehouse's death as a 'massive cocaine' overdose.

He said other people who had died with that amount of cocaine or higher, usually die of body-packer syndrome. That is where someone eats a condom full of cocaine to smuggle the drug over the border. If the condom breaks, it releases a lethal amount of cocaine.

The cocaine Thalhofer saw Whitehouse eat was 87-per-cent pure.

Huckin said this is likely because Whitehouse had bought it in bulk. The cocaine had maintained its purity because it probably arrived in Vancouver, straight from Colombia, said Huckin.

The doctor suggested a mouthful of cocaine like the one Whitehouse consumed could have caused his death.

The inquest continued today with more testimony from Thalhofer.