SIU won’t lay charges in Etobicoke police shooting
Posted May 10, 2014 12:48 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) will not lay criminal charges after a 29-year-old man was shot by a police officer last October.
The SIU interviewed three officers and six civilians who witnessed the shooting, as well as the victim and the officer who fired the gun.
Police were called to Epping Street, near Islington Avenue and The Westway in Etobicoke, around 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 5 about a theft in progress.
The SIU said an officer found the suspect hiding behind a van and ordered the man to surrender.
The suspect refused, picked up a garbage can, and headed for the officer. After dropping the bin he picked up a mallet and continued to approach the officer, smashing a car window along the way.
When the two men were about one to three metres apart, according to the officer, he fired his gun twice.
“For his part, the subject officer gave the complainant every opportunity to desist from his violent course,” Joseph Martino, the acting director of the SIU, said in a statement.
“Regrettably, tactical communication and the threatened use of his baton proved ineffective as the complainant’s aggression only seemed to escalate.”
The shooting is legally justified as self-defence, Martino concluded.
The suspect was shot in the groin, arm, and chest and suffered serious injuries.
