The Ontario police watchdog agency has cleared two Ottawa police officers involved in the shooting of a 24-year-old man just outside the Rideau Centre in late April.
Special Investigations Unit director Joseph Martino stated in a release Monday that, on his assessment of the evidence, there were “no reasonable grounds” to believe that either officer involved in the incident committed a criminal offence.
The incident took place on a sidewalk outside of an entrance to the shopping mall on the afternoon of April 29 after a school teacher on a field trip to Ottawa with her students approached a military police officer at the National War Memorial and reported seeing a man possibly with a firearm in his pants pocket. It was the day after the federal election, and the man was also holding a placard protesting the results of the vote, the SIU stated.
The Ottawa Police Service was called, and security personnel at the Rideau Centre then reported a person of the same description walking in the mall. When Ottawa officers arrived at the scene, they located the man on Rideau Street, just outside the mall.
An altercation ensued after police approached the man, and the man pulled the gun from his pants pocket, according to the SIU release.
“The man produced a firearm, and OPS police officers discharged their firearms,” the SIU release stated. “The man fell to the ground and officers began administering first aid.”
The man’s gun turned out to be an air pistol, but “it gave the appearance of a semi-automatic pistol,” the SIU report said, adding that police “had every reason to treat it as such.”
Shortly after the shooting, Ottawa paramedics said the man had been taken to hospital in critical condition. A later release from the Ottawa police said the individual was in stable condition.
The SIU incident report stated the two officers fired a total of seven rounds, and that the injured man was treated for multiple gunshot injuries, including wounds to his upper arm, lower back, left hip and right buttock.
“Given their proximity to the (man) at the time — not more than several metres away — each officer would have been rightfully concerned that their lives and the lives of others in the vicinity were in immediate danger,” Martino said in his decision. “In the circumstances, a resort to gunfire made sense.”
The SIU is a civilian oversight agency that investigates incidents involving police where there has been death, serious injury, the discharge of a firearm at a person or an allegation of sexual assault.
— With files from Paula Tran
