METRO VANCOUVER — Two Langley RCMP officers who were in the cramped bedroom where 22-year-old Alvin Wright was confronted and killed by police testified Tuesday that he ignored repeated requests – one officer said pleas – to drop a large hunting knife.
Wright was killed by another officer at the scene, Sgt. Don Davidson, who shot him once in the abdomen after he emerged from a closet where police had found him crouching, holding the knife.
The police had entered his home just before midnight Aug. 6, 2010, after receiving a 911 call from his common-law spouse Heather Hannon following a verbal row in which she was told to leave the home.
Hannon, who met the police outside the couple’s Langley townhouse, testified Monday at an inquest into Wright’s death that she not been assaulted but wanted assistance to get back into the house and pack up some personal belongings.
Instead, police entered the house, drew their sidearms and went upstairs in search of Wright, the father of the couple’s nine-month-old daughter.
On Tuesday, the second day of the inquest, the issue of police powers to enter and search a home came to the forefront.
Lawyers representing the coroner, the Wright family, and Hannon questioned the officers about their authority to enter the home and go upstairs with guns drawn when the complainant – Hannon – was outside and showed no signs of having been assaulted.
The two officers who testified Tuesday said they believed they had the right to enter the home after receiving a 911 call.
First to testify was Const. Patti Ramsay, who said that when she arrived on the scene she met Hannon, who told her she’d been physically thrown out of the house and had a hurt hand and foot.
Ramsay said the reason she entered the home was to sweep the residence to ensure the well-being of everyone inside.
Asked by coroner’s counsel Roderick Mackenzie if she had called out to announce her presence in the home, she said she couldn’t recall.
Ramsay said she went upstairs with her gun drawn “to ensure the well-being of the male upstairs.”
Asked if she was going upstairs to arrest him, she said, “My purpose was to check his well-being and get his side of the story.”
Asked if she announced her presence before entering the room, she said she couldn’t recall.
When she got to Wright’s bedroom, she couldn’t open the door and told Davidson, who was behind her, that she felt it was barricaded.
Davidson tried the door and opened it and both went inside.
They couldn’t see anyone, but Davidson walked past a partly open closet and she heard him say, “What are you doing in there? What do you have?”
At this point, she radioed Const. Brent Halm to come upstairs and he arrived and stood inside the doorway.
Davidson went to the closet and kicked one set of doors off its mountings.
Ramsay saw Wright crouching in the closet, which also contained a TV set and stand and assorted suitcases, and heard Davidson in a calm voice say, “Drop the knife.”
Ramsay said Wright was asked numerous times.
Then she said Wright stood up “and made an advancement towards Sgt. Davidson.”
He was holding a knife point outward in his right hand when Davidson shot him.
Asked if it was possible he was trying to hand the knife over, she replied: “Not many people would hand you a knife like that after they had been told to drop it.”
Asked by lawyer Don Sorochan, representing Hannon, if she heard Wright say after being shot, “I wasn’t going to stab you,” Ramsay said she didn’t hear him say anything.
For his part, Halm said Wright “lunged out of the closet.”
“Don was telling him to drop the knife, pleading with him,” said Halm.
He said he believed Wright mumbled, “You’re gonna have to shoot me to get the knife out of me.”
When he was shot, Wright fell and dropped the knife.
Lawyer David Eby, representing the Wright family, asked if it occurred to him to ask Alvin’s brother, who was in the residence, to go upstairs and check on his welfare and bring him down.
The same question had been put to Ramsay; both officers said they didn’t consider that option.
The inquest continues.
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