Question of ‘suicide by cop’ raised

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Powerful testimony from the girlfriend of 26-year-old Craig McDougall suggests he was depressed and seeking to end his life moments before he was shot by police.

On the seventh day of the inquest into McDougall’s 2008 death, Shanell Parisian took the stand Thursday and painted the picture of a man heartbroken over the recent death of his mother. Parisian was the last person to speak to McDougall, testifying he called her to “say his goodbyes” moments before approaching officers with a knife.

Parisian, who was 17 years old at the time, listened helplessly as she heard police call out to McDougall to drop the knife

She told court she kept telling McDougall to stop and wait, worried he was going to “hurt himself in some way,” but he wouldn’t respond.

“He said goodbye to me and then I heard gunshots,” she said, crying.

McDougall was shot four times after being hit twice with a Taser in the front yard of his Simcoe Street home on Aug. 2, 2008.

Parisian stayed on the phone after McDougall was shot, testifying she heard police call for an ambulance and then listened as emergency responders tried to save his life.

Parisian’s screaming and crying woke her mother, who got her to end the call.

It’s the first time the inquest has heard a witness suggesting the possibility of “suicide by cop.” On Wednesday, Corey Shefman — the lawyer representing the McDougall family — asked Tricia Zurawsky, one of the officers at the scene, if police were trained to deal with someone planning to provoke a deadly response.

McDougall was “stone-cold” and unresponsive, Zurawsky told the inquest. She and her partner responded to a call reporting a possible stabbing in the home. She spotted McDougall behind the house and he appeared “to look right through” her as he approached — cellphone to his ear, knife pressed up against his wrist, she said.

Zurawsky and Parisian both said McDougall was silent in the seconds leading up to the shooting.

Parisian testified she and McDougall had been dating for more than a year. McDougall would split his time between living with her on Peguis First Nation and at his West End home.

It was typically after arguing that McDougall would pack up and head back to Winnipeg, she said. A few days before the shooting, the couple had a fight and he returned to the city.

McDougall’s mother died a few months earlier, sending him into a depression that made him “drink all the time,” Parisian said.

“He was depressed and hurt and sad,” she said.

On the morning of his death, McDougall called Parisian twice at about 5 a.m. During the conversations, he told her he would be “watching over her.” He told her he had stabbed his father because he was trying to call the police, “for no reason.”

“He said he was sorry for hurting me and everything he has done to me,” she told the court. “He told me the police were looking for him.”

Further into the conversation he said “he wanted to go home to see his mom.”

Shefman asked about his tone of voice.

“It was kind of shaky, like he was scared of something,” she said.

When asked if she was worried about what he was going to do, she replied, “I had an idea.”

Pressed further, as Parisian began sobbing on the stand, she said, “Maybe hurting himself in some way.”

Provincial court Associate Chief Judge Anne Krahn is expected to hear more about how police shootings are investigated and how policies have changed since the Manitoba Independent Investigation Unit became operational in June 2015. This is the first inquest in Manitoba to consider what role, if any, systemic racism played in a police shooting.

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca