Yellowknife (Apr 30/03) - The estranged wife of a man who died after being removed from a Yellowknife bar hopes liquor establishments will learn to treat customers in a more "gentle and respectful manner."

The RCMP have decided not to lay charges in the death last Nov. 3 of Hank Van Vulpen.

After hearing this news, Michelle Van Vulpen, who now lives in Wisconsin, said: "I may have come to the realization that Henry's horrible, violent death has come to mean that it was just an unfortunate, however violent, accident."

However, she said she hopes establishments who continue to sell alcohol to a "captive perhaps addicted clientele" will learn to treat their clientele more gentle and respectfully.

"After getting customers to the point of total inebriation, I have witnessed bouncers at some of the establishments throw the customer out in the street like so much garbage, even in the middle of the coldest, harshest winters that Yellowknife has to offer, only to hear that the person was found dead in a snowbank." Van Vulpen wrote in an e-mail.

Van Vulpen believes that those who sell alcohol to already intoxicated people "should be held accountable for the safety of these lost souls upon their leaving the premises" whether or not they leave by their own volition.

The RCMP have turned over four two-inch thick binders of information to Chief Coroner Percy Kinney for review. Kinney will release a public coroner's report on the circumstances surrounding Van Vulpen's death in about two months.

Kinney will make the decision whether to hold an inquest into the death after reviewing the information.

Kinney said people have been found dead in snowbanks, but he doesn't recall any deaths that occurred after people were thrown out of bars.

He did mention a woman who froze to death this past winter after leaving a bar and taking a taxi to Frame Lake South.

She was found dead outside a home.