WATCH ABOVE: A Mississauga woman struck by a stray bullet speaks out. Lama Nicolas reports.
TORONTO – Two police officers were wounded, a 21-year-old woman was shot, and a 22-year-old man was shot several times and killed in Mississauga last week.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit is investigating the fatal shooting. However, they aren’t investigating the woman’s gunshot wound injuries because they aren’t serious enough, and don’t fit the SIU’s mandate, according to an SIU spokesperson.
Suzan Zreik, 21, was shot when gunfire erupted on Queen Frederica Drive near Dundas and Dixie in Mississauga shortly before 11 p.m. on Friday.
She was standing in the kitchen cutting limes when the bullet shattered the window and hit her torso.
“I called my parents and I told them I was shot. My mom opened the door and started yelling at the cops, she’s like ‘you shot my daughter, you shot my daughter,’” She said in an interview Thursday.
The bullet is still there, lodged in her back, and won’t be taken out for a few more weeks, she said.
The shooting was outside of her apartment building, where police were involved in an “altercation” with her 22-year-old neighbour. He was shot several times and died.
Zreik’s father Kamal saw the shooting and said three police officers were trying to wrestle a woman, believed to be the victim’s mother, and the man to the ground. The man got away but returned a few minutes later, running and screaming at the cops.
“He come back, he’s running, he had no shirt, no shoes, bare feet, only pants on, he just come running,” Kamal Zreik said.
“They tell him stop, and he was screaming too.”
WATCH: Lama Nicolas speaks to Suzan Zreik, 21, who was shot when gunfire erupted outside of her building in Mississauga.
One police officer was stabbed while the other was shot in the torso and protected from serious injury due to his bullet proof vest.
But it’s unclear how the officer was shot, because investigators won’t say whether the victim had a weapon. Witnesses did say, however, that a knife was found near his body.
The SIU, which investigates whenever a citizen is injured during an interaction with police, has assigned five investigators and three forensic investigators to probe what happened.
But they aren’t investigating Zreik’s injuries because they aren’t deemed serious enough.
“That to me is astounding,” Michael Moon, the family’s lawyer, said in an interview.
“The notion that a person who suffers a gunshot wound, close to their spine, with a police bullet still embedded in their body, does not constitute a serious injury, defies logic. By any measure of criminal standard, a gunshot wound is a serious bodily injury.”
Peel Regional Police would not comment on this story as the shooting is still under investigation by the SIU.
Moon said he wants the SIU to investigate whether the officers involved used proper force. He also wants the officers to be charged. He suggested that officers are too often absolved of any wrongdoing after SIU investigations and lamented the idea that the police are investigating themselves.
“No lay person could shoot somebody without facing charges, and then the merits of what they did are determined by a jury,” he said.
“Why are police given such special consideration that they can literally get away with murder without being prosecuted?”
Moon also accused police of pressuring Suzan following the shooting. She was taken to hospital almost immediately after being shot. The doctors examined her and told her she was lucky, she said.
She was allowed to leave in the morning and was waiting with her sister wearing only sweatpants and a hospital gown when a police officer asked her to wait to speak to the police.
“Then the deputy chief came and he was like ‘we need you to come down to the precinct, to 12 division, and do a statement.’ I was like ‘I would prefer if I could go home, change, and then do the statement’ and he wouldn’t allow me. He just kept pressuring me to do it,” she said.
She said she relented and went to the division.
“At this point I hadn’t slept since the night before so I was going on maybe 40 something hours of no sleep, on medication, and in pain,” she said.
Correction: A previous version of this story indicated the SIU had not commented on the investigation. They have commented, saying the woman’s injuries don’t fit their mandate.
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