Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
'The officer was scared, she panicked'
No need to shoot woman: witness
JOE.BRYKSA@FREEPRESS.MB.CA Enlarge Image
Lois Kelly shows how her neighbour held knife as she lunged towards police officer.
KENORA -- Lois Kelly had the perfect vantage point for the police shooting in this community Monday night that sent a woman to hospital with two gunshot wounds.
From her second-storey apartment on First Street South, Kelly and her friends leaned out her window and watched the drama unfold on the sidewalk below.
Members of Ontario's Special investigations Unit canvas a witness on Tuesday. (JOE.BRYKSA@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)
Kelly said a female officer from the local Ontario Provincial Police detachment was trying to convince an extremely intoxicated woman to give up a knife that she was using to strike at her wrist.
The drunken woman refused to give up the knife, Kelly said, and then she advanced on the lone officer.
The officer moved backwards, stumbled once, and repeatedly demanded the woman put down her knife. Kelly said the woman made several jabbing motions with the knife as she approached the officer and then raised her arm as if to strike the officer.
"The officer was scared, she panicked," Kelly said. "You could see it on her face."
Kelly said the officer pulled out her handgun and fired two shots at the woman, who fell on her face on the sidewalk.
The 39-year-old aboriginal woman, who witnesses identified as Helen Proulx, was treated at the Kenora hospital and then later airlifted to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg.
A hospital spokesperson said Tuesday her condition had stabilized.
Investigation of the shooting is being conducted by Ontario's Special Investigations Unit -- an independent, civilian agency that investigates police incidents in that province where people are seriously injured or killed.
A team of four investigators and three forensic investigators flew to Kenora on Tuesday morning. The investigators spent the bulk of the day interviewing witnesses in downtown Kenora where the shooting occurred.
"We're finally making headway," SIU investigator Dan Nywening said.
Kelly said the shooting attracted a large crowd of mostly aboriginal people, who began chanting at the police officer.
"People kept repeating, 'why didn't you Taser her, why didn't you Taser her,'" Kelly said, adding she believed the shooting was unnecessary given the woman's severe drunkenness.
Witnesses said both Proulx and the officer who fired her weapon are about five-feet tall.
Kelly said Proulx is her neighbour.
The neighbourhood where the shooting occurred is described as violent and filled nightly with drunks and drug addicts who are often fighting with each other, said Pastor Frank Kowal, who ministers at a street mission, the Jubilee Church of God, near where the shooting occurred.
Gilbert Kelley, a volunteer at the Jubilee Church of God, said Proulx worked as a waitress at several Kenora restaurants over the past few years, adding she was originally from the Grassy Narrows reserve, about 90 kilometres northeast of Kenora.
The Special Investigations Unit asks that anyone with information about the shooting contact 1-800-787-8529.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 9, 2010 A7
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