Manitoba’s police watchdog has found RCMP officers were not at fault in the death of a man who stabbed eight people on a First Nation then rammed into a police cruiser.
The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba says the police car was parked on a highway south of Hollow Water First Nation in September, when the man intentionally drove into it at more than 180 kilometres per hour.
RCMP had heard that the man wanted to die at the hands of police.
Mounties identified the attacker as 26-year-old Tyrone Simard, who was from the community of about 1,000 residents northeast of Winnipeg.
They said Simard killed his 18-year-old sister and injured seven others at two separate homes on the First Nation before fleeing.
The watchdog agency says the actions of officers didn’t cause Simard’s death, and it doesn’t recommend charges.
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“Unfortunately, (Simard) was the cause of his own tragic end,” Bruce Sychuk, the agency’s acting civilian director, said in a report released Wednesday.
It says the investigation relied on notes and reports from officers, audio transmissions, videos and traffic and medical reports.
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An officer told investigators that Simard had been “swerving all over the road” before he drove directly into the police vehicle.
A report by a traffic analyst suggested Simard was driving at roughly 187 km/h at the time. It also suggests Simard made no attempts to slow down before slamming into the cruiser, which was parked on the other side of the road.
The watchdog report says both vehicles travelled a short distance upon impact before coming to a complete stop. Simard was not wearing a seatbelt.
“The analyst concluded that (Simard’s) actions were either intentional or reckless,” the report says.
Sychuk did not interview the officer in the vehicle that was hit by Simard, in an effort to take a trauma-informed approach. She was seriously injured and rushed to hospital.
The report says an autopsy found Simard died of injuries related to the crash. A toxicology report said there were significant levels of alcohol and cocaine in his system.
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