IIU clears two RCMP officers in separate fatal shootings

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This article was published 08/04/2025 (354 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s police watchdog says RCMP officers were justified in fatally shooting two armed men in unrelated incidents last spring.

Both men had methamphetamine in their system and reportedly approached an officer while armed with either a knife or a machete. The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba released reports on both incidents Tuesday.

The man armed with a knife was shot by a Steinbach RCMP officer in the Rural Municipality of La Broquerie early on May 24. Police were searching for the 51-year-old man, who was wanted on warrants, in connection with multiple calls about a suspicious person when they saw him choking a driver through a vehicle window on Highway 52 near Nadeau Street.

The woman later told the IIU she was driving when she opened her window to ask a man who was acting erratically if he was OK. The man told her “everyone” was “trying to get me,” tried to open a passenger’s side door, then reached through the window and grabbed her throat, she told investigators.

The man let her go as RCMP officers approached. The officer, who gave the IIU his notes, said he knew the man, who was from the Ste. Anne area, through previous dealings. He said he fired his gun twice after the man ignored orders to drop the knife and then lunged at him.

“There are no reasonable grounds to support any charges against the subject officer,” the IIU said in identical phrasing in both reports.

The other shooting happened in Sandy Bay First Nation late on the afternoon of April 20, 2024.

Amaranth RCMP officers were sent to a home on Ridge Road South to help Manitoba First Nations Police Service officers. A 27-year-old man had reportedly threatened his girlfriend and other family members because he didn’t want her to go to a bar.

The man fled and was confronted by an RCMP officer at another location on the First Nation. The officer said he chased the man, who was armed with a machete and a tool he believed to be a hammer, into a marsh.

The officer wrote in his notes that he told the man multiple times to drop the weapons and that he was under arrest. He shot the man when he ran towards him while holding the machete, the officer wrote in his notes.

Police were told the man might have a gun and knives wrapped around his forearm, and another officer noted blades around the man’s forearm after the shooting. A video showed the machete by the man’s feet and an object that looked like a tire jack, the report said.

The preliminary cause of death was noted to be a gunshot wound to the left thorax.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca