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The provincial Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales has concluded an investigation of a fatal shooting at Clarendon in June 2023 by saying the evidence did not reveal any criminal offence by a police officer with the Sûreté du Québec.
A statement published online Tuesday said the decision was made after the prosecution service examined the report of the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes police watchdog agency.
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According to the report, a woman called 911 about a man who lived on her property at Clarendon, about 85 kilometres northwest of Ottawa in Quebec’s Pontiac region, just before 11 a.m. on June 5, 2023, saying the man was aggressive and violent to her and her partner.
About 20 minutes later, two SQ officers arrived on the scene. Asked if the other man had weapons, the couple indicated no and added that he was in a shed in the backyard.
Accompanied by the couple, the officers approached the shed. Seeing the man sitting inside, facing the door, one officer identified himself and asked the man to come out. The second officer and the couple stood nearby. When the first officer was approximately four metres from the shed, the man opened the door and pointed a long gun at him.
The officer then fired several times. The man fell on his back inside the shed, with the door closing so that the officers could no longer see him.
The couple was sent back to the house.
About 30 minutes after the shots were fired, a tactical unit made several unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the man. Eventually a drone was deployed inside the shed, revealing the man was lying on the ground. Resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful.
The prosecution officer ruled the SQ intervention was legal and that, given the man’s firearm, the physical proximity of officers and civilians to the armed man and the man’s aggressive and violent state, police had “reasonable grounds to believe that the force applied to the man was necessary for their protection and the protection of the public from serious bodily harm or death.”
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