The Abdirahman Abdi inquest is being livestreamed during the day here.
One of the Ottawa police officers who arrested Abdirahman Abdi during a violent altercation in 2016 is no longer working for the city’s police force, or any police service, he told an inquest into Abdi’s death on Wednesday.
“It still affects me to this day,” former constable David Weir said of the events of July 24, 2016. “It’s the reason why I’m not working.”
Weir is the fourth witness at a coroner’s inquest examining the circumstances of Abdi’s death. Abdi was a Somali-Canadian who suffered from mental health issues.
Abdi was pronounced dead the day after the struggle with Weir and the other officer in front of Abdi’s apartment building. They were trying to arrest him but Abdi was resisting, Weir said.
The officers were responding to calls that Abdi had assaulted several people, including women he groped in or near a Hintonburg coffee shop. It was a Sunday morning and the force was working with a “skeleton crew” when the call about Abdi came in.
“I have an arrest for sexual assault, for assault, for causing a disturbance, for mischief. You want me to keep going? I’ve got enough,” Weir told the virtual inquest, counting things off with his hand.
“I’m going to arrest him right away. That’s all there is to it. I’m going to put an end to this because he’s done enough damage.”
‘This call has been traumatic for me’
The other officer, Const. Daniel Montsion, struck Abdi in the head while they were pinning him to the ground, prompting a criminal trial in 2019 and 2020.
The judge found Montsion not guilty of manslaughter in Abdi’s death, calling the arrest a “dynamic interaction requiring quick decisions on the fly.”
In his inquest testimony on Wednesday, Weir said Montsion’s blows to Abdi’s head were key to finally subduing him after he withstood being pepper-sprayed and hit with Weir’s baton, resisted being handcuffed, ran away and did not, in Weir’s view, offer opportunities for de-escalation.
WATCH / The Abdirahman Abdi inquest has begun. Here’s what you need to know:
WARNING: This video contains graphic content | Eight years after Abdirahman Abdi died following a violent struggle with Ottawa police, a coroner’s inquest is bringing the event back into the spotlight. Here’s what you need to know.
The inquest is not a process for assigning legal blame, but rather a fact-finding mission where jurors are being asked to hear the testimony of Weir and two dozen other witnesses and recommend non-binding solutions for preventing similar deaths in the future.
Its scope is wide-ranging, focusing in part on police training for handling calls involving people in crisis.
Weir recalled receiving some mental health training at the Ontario Police College, though he could not remember specifics.
When asked by one of the inquest lawyers if he received any mental health details from dispatchers about Abdi, Weir replied:
“The very fact that he’s in there, I’m getting information that he’s in there groping multiple women, that’s not just a crime, but it’s also a mental health indicator.
“You don’t just walk into a coffee shop and start groping women. There’s mental health issues behind something like that.”
Weir also described the difficult scene after Montsion struck Abdi and they waited for paramedics to arrive.
People watching the altercation’s aftermath from the apartment building’s vestibule were “trying to break out and enter our scene. We have people on the street yelling, they’re shouting, they’re filming, they’re making false claims,” Weir said.
That included one man who accused Weir of hitting Abdi on the head with his baton when he was actually retracting it against the ground, Weir said.
According to the inquest’s agreed statement of facts, several people told Weir and Montsion that Abdi was mentally unstable.
“I never heard anybody shout that,” Weir said. “And even if they did, what does it mean? They don’t know the guy as well as I do.”
Weir said he went on leave for personal reasons for four months after Abdi’s death.
He ultimately left the police force earlier this year directly as a result of the Abdi incident.
“This call,” Weir said, his voice halting, “has been traumatic for me. And still is to this day.”
If the inquest schedule holds, Montsion will give his own account of the Abdi arrest on Thursday.
Weir must first wrap up his main testimony before undergoing cross-examination by parties including his former employer.