Alberta’s police watchdog said Thursday there are no reasonable grounds –“nor even suspicion”—to believe that officers committed any crimes in the fatal shooting of a quadriplegic man who holed himself inside a home and fired over 30 shots into his community, refusing to surrender.
READ MORE: Man killed by police in Huntington Hills identified
Over a period of 90 minutes on the afternoon of Jan. 24, 2016, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) said Dave McQueen fired a handgun out of his Huntington Hills home through the front and rear windows, the roof and walls, hitting nearby homes, fences, a trailer and narrowly missing a Calgary Transit bus driver, who was hit in the face with shattered glass as a bullet struck his vehicle.
Watch below: ASIRT finds police justified in fatal shooting of quadriplegic man
“This was, without doubt, one of the more harrowing critical incidents that ASIRT has been called in to investigate,” ASIRT executive director Susan Hughson said Thursday. “Without the actions taken by CPS, combined with sheer good luck, the potential for a civilian or police officer to be seriously injured or killed would have been extremely high.
“Whether it was his intention to cause harm, the man’s shots came perilously close to striking the bus driver, officers and potential residents in the area.”
Watch below: ASIRT calls Dave McQueen incident ‘one of the more harrowing’
The Calgary Police Service (CPS) HAWCS helicopter was used to tell residents to stay in their homes and head to the basement for shelter; a phone campaign was also used to reach them.
Failed attempts to make McQueen stop resulted in the decision to fire tear gas into the home. After the gas canisters were sent in, a tactical member saw McQueen coming out with a firearm in hand.
ASIRT said McQueen, 53, was seen in his wheelchair at the back of the home. Hughson said he was a lower-body quadriplegic as a result of a prior accident and had limited use of his hands. Despite the disability, Hughson said evidence showed he was capable of using and reloading his gun, as well as targeting officers.
Watch below: Officers exercised “reasonable restraint” in standoff with Dave McQueen, ASIRT says
McQueen then fired two rounds from his handgun, which was not legally owned. In response, two officers at the back of the house fired rounds from their rifles; a tactical member on the roof of a garage south of McQueen’s home fired three rounds from his rifle.
“The man sustained a single gunshot wound to the head,” Hughson said. “Based on the whole of the evidence, it is the only reasonable inference that the last shot fired by the tactical member, which was the last shot fired in the incident, was the cause of death.
“Up until this point in the 90 minutes earlier, CPS did not discharge a firearm.”
McQueen’s emotional struggle evident leading up to his death
Hughson said McQueen had been struggling physically, emotionally and financially in the months leading up to his death: abusing pain medication and grieving the loss of his beloved pet about a week before the shooting.
Hughson said the day of the standoff, McQueen had phoned a family member, telling them police had surrounded his house and that he had a gun. He said goodbye and hung up. That family member then alerted a friend who called McQueen.
READ MORE: Son of Calgary man shot by police shares memories of his father
Watch below: Deceased was ‘struggling’ in months leading up to death, says ASIRT
The ASIRT report reads: “He indicated, ‘I will not go back to the hospital. They did not help me.’ She told him that she was going to go over there to talk to him and he replied, ‘No. If you come over I will shoot you.’ She said, ‘You wouldn’t do that’ and he replied, ‘Yes I would.’ He then said ‘goodbye’ and hung up the phone.”
Hughson said she spoke with McQueen’s son prior to releasing ASIRT’s conclusion.
“This is obviously a man who was not always this person on this date,” she said. “There’s no doubt that this man was in crisis…It’s heartbreaking.”
‘This was…the closest we’ve come to a really significant active-shooter situation’
Hughson said every shot McQueen fired that day and each moment that passed “increased the potential for serious harm or death to people in the vicinity.”
“Having exercised restraint for over 90 minutes in the hopes that there might be a peaceful resolution to this incident, the tactical decision that the man could not be allowed to continue firing shots from the residence and that a proactive tactical response was required was more than reasonable,” she said.
Hughson called it the closest ASIRT has come to evaluating a “significant active-shooter situation.”
“There were officers throughout that neighbourhood that he was firing his revolver and they could hear shots whizzing by their head and seeing them strike the residences or houses beside them,” she said. “The shot that was fired into the bus, whether he intended to fire it into the bus or not, came dangerously close to hitting that bus driver. He is fortunate that he was very lucky that day.”
When asked if police could have exercised lethal force sooner to end the situation, Hughson suggested officers face a problem.
“Here’s the problem: they’re going to be criticized if they fire too soon; they’re going to be criticized if they fire too late—no matter what they do they’re going to be criticized.
“In my opinion, they felt they had sufficient control initially with containment, with him in the residents. And then the actions of HAWCs to protect the residence and the phone campaign that gave them some comfort that they were controlling or containing the area as much as they could.”
Watch below: Hughson answers a question on whether she believes police waited too long to shoot at an active shooter in 2016.
Hughson said she was happy to see officers tried to exhaust all other alternatives first.
“It seems to me that was a reasonable response in a reasonable time.”
Calgary police say ASIRT decision ‘reaffirms’ choices made by officers
The Calgary Police Service released a statement in response to the conclusion of ASIRT’s investigation, saying the decision reaffirms CPS members took “reasonable and necessary” actions.
“Our officers displayed great professionalism and patience in dealing with someone whose mental health, as stated by ASIRT, played an enormous role in the unfortunate outcome,” CPS said in the statement. “All attempts were made to peacefully resolve the situation, but forced to protect the community and colleagues, a decision was made to stop the threat.”
Police said they respond to challenging calls related to people with addictions or mental health issues thousands of times a year, the “overwhelming majority” of which end in de-escalation and support from community services.
“This call fell outside the realm of de-escalation,” police said. “The grief being endured by the family is not lost on the members of the Calgary Police Service. In our duty to protect public safety, we always strive for a resolution that preserves life.”
Comments