A man who died shortly after a confrontation with Swissvale police officers on Aug. 5 had a similar encounter with police in New Kensington just four months earlier.

In both incidents, witnesses said the man -- 37-year-old Andre D. Thomas -- was acting bizarrely, claiming that someone was trying to hurt him and begging for help. And both times, officers used a Taser to subdue him.

When New Kensington police stunned Mr. Thomas on April 4, he was "obviously combative," Police Chief Charles Korman said yesterday. His officers cited Mr. Thomas for public drunkenness and criminal mischief.

The day of the confrontation, Mr. Thomas entered Stella's Restaurant on Freeport Street in New Kensington and tried to use a phone. He also grabbed a ladle.

"Someone's trying to kill me," he told startled restaurant employees, according to Roxann DeSanto, whose family owns the delicatessen across the street and who spoke to the owner of Stella's.

Employees called police and told Mr. Thomas to leave. With the ladle still in his hand, he then crossed the street and entered Mrs. DeSanto's store, the Main Street Deli.

Once inside, he walked up to the counter and ripped out a keypad connected to the store's swipe machine for food stamp benefit cards. He ran through the store, swinging the ladle and trying to use the keypad as a phone.

"I've never had any trouble like that at the store," said Mrs. DeSanto, who heard about the incident from her husband and store employees who witnessed it. "It's pretty scary."

Police arrived after a few minutes, and one stun from a Taser calmed Mr. Thomas.

Later that month, Mr. Thomas, who lived briefly in New Kensington but gave police a Monroeville address, was due to appear at the office of District Judge Frank J. Pallone Jr. to plead on his two citations. He never showed up, and the judge issued a bench warrant.

Mr. Thomas' next apparent encounter with police came this month on Hawthorne Avenue in Swissvale.

At the time, police were responding to numerous 911 calls reporting a man pounding on doors and saying people were trying to kill him. Officers arrived, believing Mr. Thomas might be a victim.

One officer shocked him with a Taser. Some witnesses said they also saw police officers punch and stomp on Mr. Thomas, leading to questions about whether the officers used excessive force.

The Allegheny County medical examiner's office has said Mr. Thomas' body bore no signs of such force. Autopsies by both the medical examiner and pathologist Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, who was hired by Mr. Thomas' family, were inconclusive; county forensic investigators are awaiting the results of toxicology tests.

Howard Messer, an attorney for Mr. Thomas' family, declined to comment yesterday about the New Kensington incident.

Mr. Thomas had a history of arrests dating to the early 1990s, according to court records.

He pleaded guilty in 1992 to a string of drug charges including possession and possession with intent to deliver.

In 1995, he pleaded guilty to burglary, reckless endangerment, simple assault, public drunkenness and criminal trespass. He also pleaded guilty in 2006 to drunken driving, fleeing to elude a police officer, resisting arrest and criminal mischief.