Manitoba's Chief Medical examiner is looking into the events that went from being a call about a naked man acting erratically near a riverbank to the man dying with severe neurological damage and physiologic stress after a police encounter.

Dr. John K. Younes, Manitoba’s Chief Medical Examiner, is looking into why a 27-year-old died after a police confrontation in 2019.

He says there are two causes of death.

"The cause of death was anoxic brain injury due to complications of cardiac arrest due to probable excited delirium. Part II of the cause of death was the physiologic stress of struggle and restraint by police," the examiner says in a statement.

The manner of death was undetermined during the autopsy.

After midnight on September 23, 2019, Winnipeg Police Service offices attended a call at Assiniboine Avenue near Kennedy Street. Officers were told a nude man was near the riverbank and was acting erratically. 

When they arrived, the man was lying on his back, "yelling randomly." As officers approached the man jumped up into a fighting stance, confronting the officers.

Younes says officers attempted to restrain him, bringing the 27-year-old man to the ground and handcuffing him. They say concerns of excited delirium led them to call paramedics. 

When the paramedics arrived, the man's breathing was shallow and he appeared relaxed. Next, he became unresponsive. 

Paramedics began resuscitation and brought him to the St. Boniface Hospital, saying spontaneous circulation, which is the resumption of a heart rhythm after a cardiac arrest, was achieved there.

The man did not neurologically recover and was pronounced deceased a week later, on September 30.

The office will be looking into how the death occurred and what can, if anything can, be done to prevent this in the future.