His close friend and house-mate has also paid tribute to the "good sort" with whom he spent every day.
Dennis Llewellyn Willyams (68) died early on Saturday following a fall down the stairway entrance of Carousel lounge bar in Stuart St, shortly after his release from police custody.
Speaking yesterday, his friend described the sequence of events leading up to the death of Mr Willyams, who he said did not have a criminal record. The friend, who requested anonymity, said he lived with Mr Willyams in a Dunedin boarding house, and the pair spent every day together.
"We lived together, we grew quite close. He was a good bloke.
"We were drinking buddies as well as best friends."
Police were called to the boarding house on Friday during a domestic incident with the friend’s ex-partner, the friend said. Mr Willyams took issue with the fact the two officers arrived with a trainee in tow, and repeatedly asked for the trainee’s name and ID number, before being warned he could be arrested if he kept asking.
"He kept asking ... which led to him being arrested for obstruction of justice."
He was taken to Dunedin Central Police Station, where he was processed and given a pre-charge warning.
Mr Willyams "fainted" while at the police station and was taken by officers to the emergency department at Dunedin Hospital, the friend said.
A police spokesman said Mr Willyams was taken to hospital for a "medical issue" but said he did not fall while in custody. The friend said he met Mr Willyams as he was leaving the emergency department shortly after midnight, and paid for him to get a taxi home.
However, a couple of hours later, Mr Willyams made the fateful decision to head back into town to meet his friends at Carousel lounge bar, a popular late-night haunt in the inner city.
The friend said Mr Willyams was unsteady on his feet after leaving hospital.
A source told the Otago Daily Times Mr Willyams fell down the stairway entrance to the first-floor bar after he was asked to leave for "inappropriate behaviour" towards staff, some time between 3am and 4am. He was not a regular at the bar and not known by staff, the source said.
The friend said Mr Willyams had previously worked a variety of jobs, including at the Department of Corrections, and before he retired was a hard worker.
He had been having grief counselling to deal with the loss of Mr Willyams, and he and the others at the boarding house would remember him as a "decent man".
"No-one at the boarding house had issues with him. He was a loveable dude."
Mr Willyams’ former landlord agreed with the friend’s assessment of him as a decent person who had not previously been in trouble with the police.
The landlord said he had been enlisted by police to identify the body, as Mr Willyams’ closest family lived overseas.
A police investigation into his death concluded it was not suspicious and the case has been referred to the coroner. The Independent Police Conduct Authority had been notified the man had been in custody before his death, as was "standard procedure", police said.
