Alberta’s police watchdog has determined the amount of force used by RCMP officers in the shooting death on Highway 2 near Leduc of an armed man in May 2020 was justified, with its report into the incident saying there are no “reasonable grounds to believe an offence was committed.”
The 27-year-old man and an RCMP officer were injured in the shooting, with the man dying at the scene.
Matthew Block, the assistant executive director of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), said in the report the agency concluded the five officers’ reactions to the man, when he got out of his car, “were reasonable” as they had a duty to protect others from an “immediate and lethal threat.”
The man had been fleeing police in a black BMW car following a firearms complaint in Blackfalds on May 6 that year when he drove over a tire deflation device northbound on the major highway near the city of 36,000, 31 kilometres south of Edmonton.
Despite damaged tires, the man drove across the median and continued to drive north in the southbound lanes of Highway 2.
RCMP video shows the man stopping near Leduc, getting out of the BMW holding a firearm and pointing it at police, followed by gunfire from both sides.
The injured officer, who fired at the man from inside his cruiser through the windshield, was taken to hospital, where the report says he was “treated for cuts and abrasions to his face and arms, a missing tooth, and a broken finger,” and had two surgeries to remove pellets from his face.
He also wrote officers involved had “ample information” the person posed a serious risk, and that they knew the person had shot at people in Blackfalds, including police, and had fled.
The ASIRT report released Thursday on the incident said an autopsy on the man found he had died from seven gunshot wounds. The five officers referenced in the report said they had fired at the man when he pointed his gun and shot at one of them.
Of the man’s seven wounds, the autopsy found four of them came from bullets fired from three different directions.
A toxicology report on the man found he had consumed cocaine, marijuana and alcohol.
ASIRT recovered the man’s gun, an empty semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun, and three shotgun shell casings at the scene.