Winnipeg police officer cleared in June fatal shooting

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This article was published 19/12/2022 (1012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No charges will be laid against a city police officer who shot and killed an armed man six months ago on a North End street.

In its final report about the June 17 incident, the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba said the officer was justified in shooting a man who had been stabbing at and threatening to kill police, as well as chasing pedestrians with a knife.

The 28-page report, published online Monday, is based on several witness accounts and video footage of the fatal confrontation at Mountain Avenue and Salter Street after 4 p.m. that day.

It states the Winnipeg Police Service traffic unit officer, who at one point begged for his life, was legally authorized to shoot.

According to the IIU, a 33-year-old man had been roaming the North End dressed in a robe, shorts and slippers, carrying a knife with a six-inch blade. He was under the influence of drugs, toxicology reports showed.

Nearly four hours before the shooting, first responders were warned to be on the lookout — a 911 caller reported the man was in mental distress, whereabouts unknown, and had turned off his cell phone. Two additional 911 calls came in about the same man before the shooting: he had been inside a restaurant brandishing a knife at Main Street and Redwood Avenue; and was seen stabbing at parked cars as he walked northbound on Main.

Minutes before he encountered the police officer, the man approached a father who was waiting at a Main Street bus stop with his five-year-old son. He held his knife against the other man’s stomach, but said, “Go back to your son,” after the man pushed him away and explained he was there with his child.

The father reported the knife-wielding man then accosted other people in the area. Soon after, he heard a gunshot, according to the witness statement included in the report.

A Winnipeg police traffic unit officer in an unmarked SUV had pulled over a driver for a lapsed registration and was sitting in the driver’s seat of the police vehicle when the 33-year-old man approached, appeared to stab at the driver’s side window, then opened the car door and stabbed into the vehicle, the report said.

The police officer tried kicking him away. The man was irate, yelling: “You are going to die,” and “This is the day you are going to die,” according to the officer’s notes and narrative he provided to the IIU.

The police officer stated he pleaded with the man, telling him he had four kids at home.

Two other men — the driver who had been pulled over by the traffic officer, and a nearby truck driver — jumped out of their vehicles and approached the knife-wielding man. A passerby threw a rock or a brick at him.

The armed man started to chase them, and the police officer used the distraction to radio for help.

He then got out of the police vehicle and pointed his service weapon, telling the man to drop the knife. The officer fired once, striking the man in the neck. He was pronounced dead in hospital, the report said.

The officer didn’t have a Taser with him that day — but even if he’d had one, he stated lethal force was the appropriate response based on the situation, according to the report. Ultimately, the IIU agreed.

The 33-year-old man’s identity hasn’t been released. The IIU noted it didn’t have a “rational explanation” for his actions that day.

“The circumstances of this incident are tragic. The potential for more serious injuries and loss of life to others, including (the subject officer) and civilians in the vicinity, was high. (The officer’s) role morphed from a victim of an unprovoked and potentially lethal attack, to recipient of interventions by the pedestrians, to performing his sworn duty to protect those pedestrians from being attacked and, finally, to eliminate the significant risk to public safety and lives posed by (the 33-year-old man),” wrote IIU civilian director Zane Tessler in the final report.

A provincial government spokesman declined on Tessler’s behalf for a request for comment Monday.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca