ATHABASCA – Four years after a 51-year-old man from Calling Lake was fatally shot in an incident with two Athabasca RCMP officers, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) cleared the responsible officer.
In a 19-page report, Michael Ewenson, ASIRT’s executive director, examined an incident which started as a mental health call.
“While there is no doubt that tragically the affected person (AP) was suffering from a mental health crisis, his actions while undergoing this mental health crisis were violent and threatening to those who came into contact with him,” said Ewenson.
Just before midnight on Sept. 19, 2020, two Athabasca RCMP officers received a dispatch for a caller from Calling Lake who said he wanted to get into a shootout with the police.
While en route to the hamlet — about 70 kilometres north of Athabasca — the two officers received more calls from the man reiterating his desire for a shootout and threatening to shoot others if they didn’t show.
Both officers were armed with carbine rifles, and upon approaching AP’s residence, the man grabbed a long gun and fired one shot into the air.
The two officers, identified as witness officer (WO) and subject officer (SO), retreated back to their cars and requested additional support, including the Emergency Response Team from Edmonton.
The shooting
According to two civilian witnesses — the man’s common law partner and her son — as well as the man’s sister, AP suffered from depression and suicidal ideation as a result of experiences earlier in his life.
Throughout the evening, he had been drinking, consuming eight beer and a glass of vodka. After his mood turned to anger, both women tried to talk him into getting help, with his partner attempting to wrestle the rifle away from him.
After returning to the residence with her son, the two were flagged down by the police officers. SO asked the partner to call AP, and both briefly spoke with him. During the call, more rifle shots were fired.
The witnesses differed on what happened next. Everyone agreed that AP walked out of the house shirtless. He walked north on the road and was silhouetted under a street light.
Throughout the night, AP had stated multiple times that he wanted to kill police officers, so when the officer saw his rifle swing up towards a vehicle to the north, where the two civilians were, he fired his rifle despite having not issued any verbal commands.
All the witnesses agreed that two bursts were fired — SO said AP had reached for his rifle after initially being shot, so he fired again.
ASIRT’s report said AP presented a legitimate lethal threat, and police officers don’t need to wait for a firearm to be pointed directly at someone before taking actions to defend themselves or others.
“The subject officer was faced with an individual that was armed with a gun and had made repeated threats to shoot police officers and most importantly in this case, threatened to kill everybody in general,” read the report.
“As such, the response by the subject officer in using his firearm to shoot AP was proportionate to the threat of death or grievous bodily harm that AP reasonably posed to anyone in the vicinity of AP.”
