VANCOUVER - Firefighters who rushed to Vancouver's airport in the minutes after Robert Dziekanski was stunned by an RCMP Taser found a pale, unresponsive man face down in handcuffs as officers stood metres away doing nothing, a public inquiry into the man's death heard Monday.

Richmond Fire Department Capt. Kirby Graeme said when he arrived in the early morning of Oct. 14, 2007, the officers weren't helping or monitoring Dziekanski, and at one point even refused to remove the man's handcuffs so he could be properly assessed.

Minutes earlier, the same four Mounties had confronted Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant who had been throwing furniture around in the airport's international arrivals area.

"To see a patient face-down, handcuffed and not being tended to in some way, shape or form, I thought, `Something's not right here,"' said Graeme, a firefighter with more than two decades of experience.

"I saw it being unprofessional."

Graeme was asked by Walter Kosteckyj, the lawyer for Dziekanski's mother, if he considered whether the officers "were obstructing your efforts to be able to help this man?"

"Yes," replied Graeme.

Graeme said Dziekanski was laying on his face with his head turned to one side, and had not been placed in a first-aid position known as "recovery position."

He said by the time his crew arrived at the airport, six-and-a-half minutes after a dispatcher first received the call, Dziekanski had no pulse and was likely already dead.

It wasn't until paramedics arrived shortly after that officers finally removed the handcuffs.

Dziekanski still had no pulse, wasn't breathing, and did not have the vital signs required to use an automatic defibrillator.

Paramedics and firefighters performed chest compressions for more than 20 minutes before Dziekanski was declared dead, said Graeme.

He also said the airport's own firefighters, which he estimated to be based just 800 metres away from where Dziekanski was stunned, were not called.

He said that team is typically the first to respond to medical emergencies at the airport, and would have been able to reach the scene much faster than his team from the fire hall, which is located six kilometres away.

"They were not there, which actually surprised me," he said. "Every other medical assignment that I've been sent to, they're always there, and they're always there first."

It's not clear why that team was not called.

Graeme was later asked by Kosteckyj if he had spoken with the airport's emergency response team since October 2007.

"Has it been conveyed to you that there's been a high level of frustration at not being involved in this matter?" asked Kosteckyj.

"Yes," replied Graeme.

The inquiry, which opened last week, is trying to get a full accounting of what happened to Dziekanski prior to his death on the floor of the airport.

It will also examine how agencies responded in the weeks and months that followed.

The head of the inquiry, retired judge Thomas Braidwood, oversaw another phase of the public inquiry last year examining Taser use by law enforcement in B.C. in general.

A report from those hearings is expected within weeks.