Alberta police watchdog clears pair of city officers in man's 2020 shooting death

Police incident in north Edmonton on Sept. 18, 2020.

Police officers involved in a man's September 2020 Edmonton shooting death have been cleared by the province's law-enforcement watchdog.

Two city policemen on Sept. 18, 2020, said in a report released Thursday by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team they believed the man posed an immediate threat to them, so they opened fire on him in the backyard of a home near 68 Street and 118 Avenue.

Edmonton police had received multiple complaints late that afternoon about a man carrying a weapon.

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According to a report released Thursday by ASIRT, two officers found him holding a shotgun across his lap while sitting in a lawn chair in the backyard of an area home.

The officers told the man to drop the gun and show his hands. He did not comply, instead starting to raise the weapon in their direction, said the report. Both policemen fired their weapons, hitting the man, and noted he stopped moving.

He died at the scene.

Michael Ewenson, ASIRT's executive director, said in the report the officers "were lawfully placed and acting in the execution of their duties" and that shooting the man "was reasonably necessary."

"The force used was proportionate, necessary, and reasonable in all the circumstances," Ewenson said in the report, adding there are "no grounds" to believe an offence was committed by the officers.

Several witnesses told investigators they had noticed men's voices yelling various commands — such as 'Get your hands up' and 'Lay down your weapon' — before hearing multiple gunshots.

Some detailed seeing a man with a firearm near the Eastglen Motor Inn either wrapped in clothing or exposed, prompting calls to police.

A female witness in the report, identified as a cousin to the man killed, said his wife had died a month earlier, that he had been "venting to her" in the days leading up to the shooting — stating that he was institutionalized and that he wanted to go 'home' — saw him in her home the day of his death carrying a firearm and saying "he was going to go kill himself."

She said she later told a friend to call 9-1-1.

Another witness, a next-door neighbour, said in the report he told police he heard a man say "If the cops show up, I'd shoot them." The witness said he asked his wife to call police.