VANCOUVER - A paramedic who arrived after an aboriginal man died in a Vancouver alley told an inquiry into his death the gravel underneath Frank Paul's body had shifted like a snow angel to indicate he may have had a seizure before he died.

The inquiry is looking into why Vancouver police removed Paul from the city drunk tank and dumped him in the alley, where he died of hypothermia.

Paramedic Fernando Grossling said Friday he and his partner were sent to a Code 4 call - meaning someone had died - in the early-morning hours of Dec. 6, 1998.

Grossling told the inquiry an advanced life support ambulance was already on the scene where Paul's body was found.

He said he'd known Paul from having attended more than a dozen calls involving him and that the homeless aboriginal man was often verbally abusive when he was heavily drunk.

"As I walked up it was quite obvious it was Frank," Grossling said of the last time he saw Paul, just before 3 a.m. on a cold, rainy December night nine years ago.

Grossling testified business owners would sometimes call 911 when Paul was loitering in front of their premises and that he'd offer the homeless man a cigarette when he didn't want to leave.

If Paul was unco-operative, Grossling said he'd call for a police wagon to pick him up.

Otherwise, he'd phone Saferide, which transports drunks to a detox centre.

Ward Findlay, a paramedic who arrived in the advanced life support ambulance a few minutes before Grossling, said Paul's body was found at the back of a detox centre.

Paul hadn't been admitted there, but was left in the alley by a police officer on orders of a sergeant at the drunk tank where the alcoholic had been taken more than 200 times.

Findlay, now a critical-care paramedic who transports patients via helicopter, said Paul's body had started to stiffen by the time help arrived, indicating he'd been dead for a while.

A photo of Paul taken that morning that's evidence at the inquiry shows him lying on his back, his shoes a few metres away.

Marilyn Oberg, who was in the advanced life support ambulance with Findlay, testified Thursday that she regularly attended to calls involving Paul and that he'd started to have seizures.

Oberg said she once found Paul unresponsive outside a hotel and that he'd been thrashing around so much that the skin on his arms and back was scraped.

Patrick Lewis testified Friday said he was in a cab at about 10 p.m. the night before Paul's body was found and saw a shaggy-haired man lying in the alley. He was on his stomach and moving up on his elbows.

"He was facing toward me and rising up," said Lewis, adding Paul's face was shadowed.

Lewis, an administrator at the University of British Columbia, said he was concerned about what he'd seen but went to a party in the area and became too distracted to call 911.

The inquiry has heard that racism was involved in how police treated Paul.

His cousin, Peggy Clement, said police called the family more than a month after Paul died to say he was killed in a hit and run and that his body was found in a ditch.

For years, several aboriginal groups, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the provincial Office of the Police Complaint Commission demanded the government call an inquiry into Paul's death.

But that didn't happen until earlier this year, after police complaint commissioner Dirk Ryneveld released a video recording of Paul's last two visits to the drunk tank.

The video shows him crawling into the facility and then being dragged out by police because he couldn't stand.

The inquiry has also heard Paul had trouble with his feet and legs, which were sometimes swollen.