Officer not responsible in fatal police-involved shooting in Kitchener

Waterloo Regional Police officers were found to have not committed any criminal offence in the February fatal shooting of a 31-year-old man in Kitchener.

The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) released its findings on Friday after investigating the facts of the incident and interviewing a number of witnesses to the shooting.

According to the report, Waterloo Regional Police officers arrived at an apartment building on Brybeck Cres. at around 8:55 p.m. on Feb. 19 after a person reported their family member was “of unsound mind” and had a machete.

After arriving, police found the 31-year-old man wielding the machete.

According to the report, the man ran toward officers, one officer discharged his conducted energy weapon, and the man fell to the ground. The man then got back to his feet, moved towards the officers again, and was hit with the conducted energy weapon once more.

After continuing to advance on the officers after being struck with the conducted energy weapon twice, another officer shot the man with his firearm twice in the torso, inflicting fatal wounds.

After being shot, the man fell to the ground near a police cruiser. Officers continued to tell the man to drop the machete, but it had already left his hand and became lodged in the police cruiser.

Four minutes after the shooting, officers pulled the man out from under the cruiser and attempted CPR.

The officers wore body-worn cameras during the incident, which caught the shooting on film with accompanying audio.

Five civilian witnesses and five official witnesses were interviewed in the investigation, but the officer who fired the weapon declined the interview, which they have the legal right to do.

“I am satisfied that the [officer] fired his weapon to repel what he reasonably apprehended to be an attack on his partner,” wrote SIU Director Joseph Martino in the report.

Martino added that the length of time between the shooting and the officers attempting CPR was considered for offences of “criminal negligence causing death,” but that officers “could not have been certain of the state of his condition at the time or whether he remained a threat.”

The case is now closed.