No charges for officers who killed man during Sherbourne St. standoff

TORONTO – Two officers involved in the fatal shooting of a man holding a pellet gun during a standoff in Nov. 2013 will not be charged, the Special Investigations Unit said Friday.

The SIU investigated two unidentified subject officers – one of whom consented to an interview and provided his notes to investigators, the other did not.

The standoff happened on Sherbourne Street during the afternoon of Nov. 13 when the two officers tried to arrest the victim. Before they could arrest him however, the man ran, fell and pointed the pistol at one of the officers.

The man then ran up the front steps of a home on Sherbourne. The SIU said in a press release Friday that security footage from the building “clearly shows the man pointing the gun toward the officer” and that he fired his pistol several times.

The SIU said the sound from the shots made it clear it was a pellet gun, however that information was not passed along to responding officers, including the  ETF which took over the investigation when they arrived.

“In the aftermath of the incident it was discovered that the man was actually armed with a pellet gun, not a genuine firearm,” SIU director Tony Loparco said in a press release. “However, that fact would not have been apparent at the time of the shooting.  In fact, everyone who observed the gun felt the opposite was true.  The subject officer who spoke to the SIU indicated he believed the gun was a real handgun.

The man then ran to a neighbouring building on Sherbourne Street and barricaded himself behind an overturned table.  An ETF negotiator “made numerous attempts to reason with the man,” according to the SIU but the man “rose up from where he had been crouching… leaned forward quickly and pointed his pistol” towards other officers.

The SIU said the two subject officers shot and killed the man shortly thereafter.

“In the end, given the ‘facts’ available to the ETF officers, I am satisfied that the subject officers reasonably believed that the lives of their fellow officers were in danger at the time they discharged their guns,” Loparco said.