Mountie will not be charged after man shot in rear

An RCMP officer will not be charged after he shot a man he said was driving towards him, even though two reports suggest the vehicle had already passed him when he opened fire.

The driver, who has a lengthy history of auto-theft offences, was hit in a buttock — and suffered a perforated rectum — in the incident on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Portage la Prairie early on June 15, 2022.

The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba said in a report released Wednesday that investigators were given an RCMP forensic report on the incident and retained an expert to compose a ballistic report. The reports concluded the shots fired by the Mountie into the truck were at a 45-degree angle, suggesting the truck had already passed the officer, the IIU said.

David Frank Burling, who was 27 at the time, told the IIU there was no way the officer could have felt threatened by his truck because he had already driven past him when he fired. Burling said he was confident the angle of the bullet holes would confirm that.

No video from the officer’s vehicle was available because, “unfortunately,” its memory was full, the IIU report noted.

The Manitoba Prosecution Service took two years to decide there was “no reasonable likelihood of conviction” if the officer was charged.

“Although it is often in the public interest to hold police officers accountable for criminal wrongdoing, we are always mindful of our charge authorization standards and find that they have not otherwise been met in the present case,” the Crown said in an opinion given to the IIU on May 28.

The incident began with the theft of all-terrain vehicles.

The officer, who declined to be interviewed by the IIU, turned over his notes. He said he spotted the suspect truck in the area of the Trans-Canada and Provincial Road 240 and was trying to confirm the licence plate when the driver hit the brakes, nearly leading to a crash.

The truck then slammed into his vehicle twice, with the vehicles getting jammed together the second time, the officer said in his notes. A collision report concluded the truck drove into the police vehicle.

The Mountie said he got out of his vehicle, thought the driver pointed something at him, and drew his gun, the notes state.

The driver reversed slightly, separating the vehicles, before accelerating towards him, the officer wrote in his notes, adding he could not back up because his own vehicle was behind him. The forensic and ballistic reports concluded the officer was in front of his police vehicle when he fired the shots.

The officer said he fired his gun because he feared for his safety and that the truck barely missed his leg as the driver sped off.

Burling was arrested in Portage shortly after the shooting and charged with attempted murder and other offences. He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in January 2024. With time served, he was given an additional 72 days. He was also given a five-year driving ban.

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“This has got to stop,” provincial court Judge Heather Pullan said when Burling pleaded guilty in May 2020 to nearly a dozen vehicle-theft related charges. “It’s been a one-man crime wave for two years.”

Burling once claimed it was his goal in life “to keep police busy as long as he was able to,” court records state.

Months after he was released from prison for the 2022 incident, Burling was arrested after the Winnipeg Police Service said a stolen pickup truck rammed one of their vehicles in Otterburne on June 5, 2024. Tristan Mariash, 30, who had also recently been released from a correctional centre, was fatally shot by an WPS officer while in the truck.

Burling drove off in another vehicle, police said at the time, and was arrested near Springside, Sask., about 11 hours later. He was charged with two counts of assaulting a police officer with a weapon and other offences, and remains before the courts.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca