Alberta’s police watchdog said it was necessary for police to shoot a man who stabbed a mother and her child outside a southeast Edmonton school last year.
The attack outside Crawford Plains School in Mill Woods on Friday, May 5, 2023 claimed the lives of 35-year-old mother Carolann Robillard and her 11-year-old child Sara Miller, who preferred to go by the name Jayden.
Edmonton police called it a random attack.
Robillard was a single mother of three children. Police said Jayden and an eight-year-old sister had walked home from school but could not get inside, so they called their mom.
They walked back to the school to meet their mother, and they were attacked. The younger child escaped.
In its summary report released Friday, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team said the man was still a lethal threat almost as soon as police arrived at the scene, wielding two knives and using bear spray as he approached officers.
The agency said there are no grounds to believe the officers committed a criminal offence by shooting the man.
Police have said the man was known to the force, had mental health issues and was the sole person responsible for the stabbing deaths.
An autopsy found he had fentanyl, methamphetamine and cannabis in his system at the time.