BURST
An RCMP officer’s decision to shoot at an American citizen who fled a border security screening and drove into Canada illegally in February of last year has been deemed a reasonable and appropriate use of force by the province’s serious incident response team.
The American did not die from being shot at by the officer. Instead he shot himself in the head following a car and on-foot chase by RCMP officers on Feb. 4, according to a document detailing the team’s investigation shared on Wednesday .
The individual, unnamed in the document, had attended a Canadian port of entry in Coutts, Alberta at 7:32 a.m. in his vehicle and was directed by a border security officer to turn his vehicle into a designated area to undergo a secondary screening.
Instead the American, referred to as “affected person” in the document, drove across the border. RCMP and Alberta sheriffs were notified of the individual and his history of pending charges in the United States related to theft of a firearm and assaulting a peace officer.
One officer located his vehicle at 8:16 a.m. and directed him to a traffic stop. The individual was directed to step out of the vehicle, but although he had initially opened his side door, he closed it again and drove northbound on Highway 4.
A chase ensued with pursuit speeds going as high as 140 km/h, involving multiple officers at separate points of the chase. The individual had approached the American side of the Coutts border but turned around on finding the entry blocked.
An officer managed to strike the vehicle with their own and attempted to pin it into the wall, but the individual escaped. The officer noted that he held a gun to his head at the time of the collision, the document states. The driver continued to drive northbound in the southbound lanes of Highway 4, slowing down intermittently when there was oncoming traffic, and narrowly avoided a collision when two semi-trucks were travelling side-by-side.
He drove over a tire deflation device, set up in advance across all lanes of the highway, and despite attempts to drive, drove into a ditch at 9:38 a.m. and came to a stop.
With a gun still held to the right side of the head, he attempted to escape on foot and ran towards a nearby resident, ignoring police commands to “get on the ground,” according to the document.
The RCMP officer had been pursuing the individual, alongside other officers, and fired a single shot at the individual as he was nearing the residence.
However, the individual ran around the house and out onto a range road on the south side of the property. He continued running even as officers warned him to “get on the ground” and that a failure to comply could get him shot.
The individual ran down the road, into a ditch and climbed a barbed-wire fence into a field with neighbouring homes.
Two officers and a trained police dog entered the field. At 9:46 a.m., the dog was deployed to catch the individual but as soon as the dog caught onto the individual’s left arm, he shot himself in the head.
Toxicology reports from an autopsy showed that the individual had ingested alcohol, cocaine, MDMA, ketamine and LSD sometime before death. An autopsy found the immediate cause of death to be suicide by gunshot wound to the head and referenced that the individual had a history of progressive paranoid-schizophrenia-like behaviours, constant delusions of persecution, and multiple mental health hospital admissions.
Officer believed the individual posed a risk to public, police
The team interviewed four civilian witnesses and 10 police officers, including the officer who fired the gun.
The officer who fired the shot stated he did so as he believed the individual presented a risk of bodily harm to the public and police. He added that he believed the individual would engage with the police and feared that he may enter the residence “to try to evade apprehension or engage in an armed and barricaded situation.”
When the individual had left the vehicle and fled towards the residence, the officer said he had “never been more scared in his entire career,” the document reads.
The interviewed civilian witnesses stated they observed the police pursuit of the individual’s vehicle along Highway 4 and three confirmed that the individual ran through their property after abandoning his vehicle, with police in pursuit. While he was observed to be holding something in his right hand, which was held near the side of his head, they did not hear any gunshot, the document stated.
Six of the nine officers interviewed, excluding the officer being investigated, played a peripheral role in the pursuit and described the chase.
Two officers had been able to engage the individual in a conversation, wherein he referenced being tortured in the United States and didn’t want to go back. Despite assurances that he is safe in Canada, the individual did not put down his gun. Officers had their weapons trained at him, stating that they were concerned that he may fire on them.
Video evidence analyzed in the aftermath of the incident showed footage consistent with the narrative provided by the officer being investigated.
The investigation found that the officer had acted in accordance with Section 25 of the Criminal Code, wherein an officer is permitted to use force when they believe on reasonable grounds that the force is necessary for the “self-preservation of the officer or preservation of anyone under the officer’s protection.”
“It was necessary for the SO to fire at the AP when he did. The AP had refused to comply with police directions. He had managed to create considerable distance from the officers and was nearing the occupied civilian residences while armed with a gun. Under the circumstances as then faced by the SO, no other use of force options were reasonably available to him,” the document reads.