San Francisco police said late last week that they believe that Barry Nielsen, the gay man who died after being severely injured on Bryant Street last October, was not a victim of homicide but died after falling off a standpipe.  San Francisco Police homicide Inspector Holly Pera told the Bay Area Reporter that witnesses saw Nielsen, 48, listening to an iPod and dancing on the pipe and then seconds later saw him on the ground. He had been working as a greeter in the early evening outside an art gallery on Bryant and Mariposa streets. Witnesses told police that prior to standing on the pipe, Nielsen was vigorously dancing and nearly stumbled when he danced around a concrete trash container.

"We can place him on that standpipe and in seconds place him on the ground," Pera said. "We could find nothing that would establish that any kind of crime occurred."

Pera added that no witnesses actually saw Nielsen fall because they were turned away from him during the few seconds between the time when he was seen on the pipe and the time he was on the ground.

In a 20-page report issued last week, the San Francisco Medical Examiner's office concluded that Nielsen died of "cervical spinal cord

Barry Nielsen died last October.

injury due to blunt trauma of head and neck" but that it was "undetermined" whether he was the victim of a homicide or an accident.

Nielsen's former partner, Eric Hallquist, sharply disagreed with the police conclusion that Nielsen's death was an accident and accused police of pushing the San Francisco Medical Examiner's office away from concluding that Nielsen was a homicide victim.

Hallquist noted that doctors at San Francisco General Hospital and San Francisco assistant medical examiner, Dr. Judy Melinek, told him initially that they thought it was likely that Nielsen had been attacked.

"The whole thing has not only been discouraging. It's disgusting," Hallquist said of the police investigation.

A spokesman for the medical examiner's office, Steve Gellman, told the B.A.R. that his office reached its conclusion independently. Gellman added that oftentimes, investigators with his office have to contend with strong opinions from people about a case but ultimately have to rely on facts and evidence when drawing any conclusions.

Results of Nielsen's toxicology tests were released to Hallquist in February and made public in the medical examiner's report last week. The tests showed no drugs or alcohol in Nielsen's system. Hallquist said he believes that the police investigation had stalled because of what he called the detectives' "obsession" with the toxicology reports. Hallquist said that Melinek was persuaded by police shortly after the toxicology reports came back to shift her opinion away from believing that Nielsen had been murdered.

Pera said that Melinek may have changed her mind around that time because she revisited the scene with Pera and her police partner, Joe Toomey. Pera said that Melinek agreed at that time that Nielsen's injuries were "100 percent consistent" with a fall from the pipe.

Pera said that the fall from the pipe would explain the different planes of injuries suffered by Nielsen.

She said he may have hit the top of his head on the pipe and injured his neck and back when he fell to the concrete edge of the planter box. She added that Nielsen likely sustained facial injuries when he fell forward on his face.

Hallquist said that Nielsen battled HIV for several years and was hospitalized in February and March 2005 but had completely recovered and was in good health when the incident happened.