The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) has determined officers acted lawfully when they shot and killed a suspect in Red Deer nearly two years ago.
A 37-year-old man was shot and killed by police on Christmas Day 2015 following a series of events, which began as a sexual assault and attempted murder investigation.
READ MORE: Alberta man fatally shot by police after Christmas Day rampage around Red Deer
Early that morning, police said the man was at a house he shared with his common-law partner where he was alleged to have “committed several serious violent offences.”
After several calls to 911, police began their investigation. At the time, police said they wanted to speak to the man about the sexual assault of a 47-year-old Red Deer woman and the attempted murder of a 20-year-old Red Deer man.
The suspect was eventually tracked down in a stolen vehicle in Sylvan Lake at around 11:30 a.m., police said at the time.
When officers tried to pull him over, the suspect reversed into a police cruiser, injuring the officer and making the vehicle not driveable. The suspect then fled the scene.
Shortly before 1 p.m., RCMP received a 911 call reporting the man went to a home of people he knew, to tell them he was in trouble for ramming a police officer. ASIRT said the man asked the people for money, cellphone and keys. When they refused, the man left in the stolen vehicle, hitting the house and a snowmobile on his way out.
Officers located the stolen truck a short time later, abandoned in the Caterpillar (CAT) Finning lot in the Edgar Industrial area in Red Deer.
Watch below: Police speak about Christmas Day rampage in Red Deer (From Dec. 26, 2015).
The man then got into a front-end loader and started driving through the area. He drove over a fence and into a nearby parking lot, where police said he struck several vehicles, flipping some of them on their sides.
The man was located by police in a nearby field where he was driving the loader into and over stacked hay bales, ASIRT said.
Police followed the man as he drove the front-end loader through fields and onto a portion of Highway 2. Concerned for the safety of other drivers, police closed access to the highway in the area.
ASIRT said police in two separate vehicles attempted to use a spike belt on Range Road 273A to stop the man, but he proceeded to drive directly at the officers.
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One police officer reversed into a driveway and was followed by the man in the loader, while the other officer parked and got out of the vehicle.
ASIRT said the man in the loader rammed the police officer who remained in the car, pushing it into a nearby tree. The suspect then attempted to lower the bucket of the loader onto the roof of the Dodge Charger being driver by the RCMP officer.
When the officer on foot saw what was going on, he began firing his pistol at the man in the cab of the loader. The officer pinned in the vehicle was able to get out of the car and also fired at the man in the loader.
The officers stopped shooting when they saw the front-end loader begin to drive in circles. Now on a 4×4 vehicle, the officers approached the loader where the driver was slumped on the floor.
After police stopped the loader from moving, the man was pulled out of the cab. EMS crews pronounced him dead at the scene.
READ MORE: New details emerge about Christmas Day rampage in Alberta
An autopsy confirmed the man died of multiple gunshot wounds to the torso. Toxicology results found methamphetamine and amphetamine, a metabolite of methamphetamine, in the man’s blood.
ASIRT was directed to investigate the police officers’ actions and found they acted lawfully and their use of force was reasonable and justified.
“The man had been ingesting methamphetamine and had engaged in unpredictable, violent acts,” ASIRT executive director Susan D. Hughson said in a media release.
“Operating this front-end loader in the manner he did resulted in it becoming a weaponized 35,000-pound blunt instrument that was much more difficult to stop or contain than any other standard vehicle. Even prior to the ramming of the Charger police vehicle, it is my opinion that the officers had a duty to ensure public safety and apprehend the man to render the situation safe.”
ASIRT said the suspect escalated the incident by “attacking the officers.”
“In doing so, he committed acts objectively capable of causing death or grievous bodily harm,” ASIRT said. “The man’s actions, in ramming the police vehicle while the officer was still inside, pushing it into a tree, and trying to lower the bucket onto the roof of the vehicle, placed that officer at imminent risk of grievous bodily harm or death and only the split second decision to use lethal force prevented that from happening.”
ASIRT is brought in to investigate any time an incident involving Alberta’s police results in serious injury or death to any person, as well as serious or sensitive allegations of police misconduct.
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