Medical examiner calls inquests into six deaths

The province’s chief medical examiner has called inquests into six deaths in 2023, including the fatal shooting by Winnipeg police of a man who was holding a woman hostage at knifepoint.

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. John Younes announced Wednesday he was calling the new inquests.

The separate proceedings will examine the deaths of Arthur Nelson, 52, Afolabi Opaso, 19, and Dustin Hatcher, 39, all of whom were shot by city police officers, as well as the accidental drug poisoning deaths of Ricardo Pereira, 23, Michael Sankar, 30 and Tiana Obirek, 25.

Nelson was shot by two police officers inside an apartment suite at 25 Furby St. on the afternoon of Dec. 28, 2023, as the officers made a split-second decision to try to free the woman he had been holding hostage for several hours. The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba, which probes serious matters involving police, cleared the officers of wrongdoing.

Police have said Nelson was a person of interest in the slaying of Delta, B.C., truck driver Farah Mohamud, 34. Mohamud’s body was found in a suite on the fifth floor of the same apartment complex on Boxing Day 2023.

Opaso, a Nigerian University of Manitoba international student, died in hospital on Dec. 31, 2023.

A Winnipeg officer, called to his University Crescent apartment for a wellness check, shot him while he was armed with two knives and acting erratically while his two roommates were also in the suite, police said at the time.

Alberta’s equivalent of the IIU, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, deemed the shooting justified. The Alberta watchdog took over the investigation to avoid any conflict of interest after it was learned a Manitoba Justice staffer was a relative of an officer involved in the shooting.

Hatcher died after the stolen truck he was driving on on Nov. 8, 2023 reportedly drove into a city officer who had stopped him. The officer shot at the truck and Hatcher three times. The IIU deemed the shooting justified.

Pereira overdosed on methadone in Stony Mountain federal prison on Sept. 5, 2023, Sankar died of a methamphetamine overdose while in the back of a city police car on Aug. 7, 2023, and Obirek overdosed on meth, para-fluorofentanyl and bromazepam in the Winnipeg Remand Centre on Oct. 21, 2023.

Inquests, which are held in front of provincial court judges, are meant to examine the circumstances of a given death and determine what, if anything, could be done to prevent similar deaths in the future.

The provincial court will determine, at a later date, when and where the inquests will be held.

Inquests are mandatory when an individual dies as a result of police or peace officers using force, when a person dies in a jail or prison, or when held in involuntary care under the Mental Health Act.

The proceedings can also be called into deaths in other circumstances, if the chief medical examiner deems it in the public interest.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca