Man assaulted by police during G20 died from internal bleeding, not heart-attack

Ian Tomlinson, the man shortly after an unprovoked attack by a police officer during London's G20 demonstration, did not die of a heart-attack, as was previously thought. A new postmortem shows that Tomlinson died of abdominal bleeding after the attack by the police-officer. Tomlinson was not a demonstrator — he was a passer-by on the way home.

The Coroner's statement said the second post-mortem's conclusions were provisional.

In its statement, the Coroner's Court said that the inquest had looked at the first post-mortem carried out after Mr Tomlinson collapsed and died on the evening of 1 April.

That examination, carried out by Dr Freddy Patel, concluded that Mr Tomlinson had diseased heart and liver and a substantial amount of blood in the abdominal cavity.

"His provisional interpretation of his findings was that the cause of death was coronary artery disease," said the statement.

"A subsequent post-mortem examination was conducted by another consultant forensic pathologist, Dr Nat Cary, instructed by the IPCC and by solicitors acting for the family of the late Mr Tomlinson.


G20 death was not heart attack