Police watchdog clears Ottawa officer who shot woman in Westboro

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Ontario’s police watchdog has cleared an Ottawa Police Service officer in connection with the shooting of a woman in Westboro in March following a traffic stop.

A report released Friday by the Special Investigations Unit, an independent government agency that investigates police conduct, said officers attempted to pull over a vehicle with excessively tinted windows on the afternoon of March 22, but the driver wouldn’t stop.

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The female driver, identified by this newspaper via court documents as Morgan Rachel Laplante, drove her Audi over some rocks at the end of a dead-end residential street in Westboro, which destroyed the vehicle’s tires, the report said.

“She was able to drive the vehicle northwards on Tweedsmuir Avenue until its intersection with Avondale Avenue,” the report said. “That was where the complainant abandoned the Audi and took flight on foot westward on Avondale Avenue. In her right hand, she carried a loaded Smith & Wesson handgun.”

As the woman ran along Avondale with the gun in her hand, an Ottawa Police Service officer, identified via court documents as Const. Patrick Wiseman, ran after her.

The SIU report said Wiseman saw Laplante was carrying a gun and repeatedly yelled at her to drop the weapon.

“The officer ran with his sidearm in his right hand and told her he would shoot if she did not release the gun,” the report read, adding that Laplante told Wiseman to “leave her alone” and continued to run westward on Avondale, several metres ahead of the officer.

As the woman approached a point in the road on Avondale about 180 metres west of Tweedsmuir Avenue, she started to turn in the officer’s direction, which was when he fired four rounds from his semi-automatic pistol in her direction.

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The woman dropped her gun and was handcuffed, arrested, and taken to the Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital, where she was treated for multiple gunshot wounds to the torso.

READ MORE: Avondale Avenue residents rattled after woman shot by police Friday

The front door of a nearby home was struck by a stray bullet and the glass on the door was visibly damaged.

The report said SIU director Joseph Martino concluded there were no reasonable grounds to believe that the officer committed a criminal offence, as he had been “engaged in the execution of his lawful duties” throughout the series of events.

“By the time he arrived at Avondale Avenue, he had witnessed the complainant driving dangerously to travel past a dead-end road and had cause to take her into custody on that basis,” Martino wrote, adding the evidence indicates the officer shot the woman “to protect himself from a reasonably apprehended attack.”

Martino also found the officer’s use of force was reasonable in the situation, as the woman “gave the officer every reason to fear that she was about to shoot him.

“In the circumstances, what was required in the moment was (the woman’s) immediate incapacitation,” Martino writes. “And the only weapon with the necessary stopping power was (the officer’s) gun.”

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Martino said there were differing accounts of what happened immediately before the officer shot the woman, with some witnesses suggesting she was stumbling forward as she turned to face the officer. Other witnesses said she had fallen to the ground when the shots were fired.

“What is common ground, however, and what is key to the defence, is that the complainant had either turned or was turning with the gun in the officer’s direction. On this record, I am satisfied the (officer) was justified in his conduct,” Martino wrote.

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