The province’s police watchdog has cleared a Waterloo, Ont., officer in connection with a fatal shooting that left a 31-year-old Kitchener man dead in February.
Waterloo Regional Police officers were dispatched to Brybeck Crescent and Karn Street in Kitchener on Feb. 19 after a family member reported that the man was having a “psychotic episode” and had a machete and had left an apartment building, according to the SIU report.
When officers reached the scene, the man ran at them with the machete drawn, before one of the officers fired a stun gun at him, the report says.
The SIU report said that the officer fired the stun gun a second time but the man kept coming at him before his partner shot him.
Because officers were concerned about the machete and did not realize the gravity of the situation, it would be four minutes before they attended to the man with CPR, according to the police watchdog’s report.
In his decision, SIU Director Joseph Martino said that there were no reasonable grounds to believe the officer who shot the man had committed a criminal offence.
He wrote, “I am satisfied that the (officer) fired his weapon to repel what he reasonably apprehended to be an attack on his partner.”
The SIU is an independent agency that investigates incidents involving police that have resulted in death, serious injury or alleged sexual assault.
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