A Calgary officer who shot a 76-year-old man who had reportedly confronted officers with a knife after attacking his grandson with a hammer has been cleared of wrongdoing.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) said no charges will be laid.
ASIRT said officers were responding to a 911 call on Oct. 11, 2016, around 11 a.m. They said the call “initially consisted of screaming” but that minutes later, a man told dispatchers his grandfather was “trying to kill him with a hammer.”
When officers arrived they found a naked man outside the home suffering from a head wound. He said his grandfather had attacked him with a hammer and he had stabbed the elderly man in self-defence.
Upon investigating, police noticed blood on the wall and the floor of the home and heard a loud, mechanical noise coming from the garage.
“Officers could see a man, covered in blood, through the window on the side of the garage,” ASIRT said in a statement.
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To get into the garage, officers had to force open a door. Inside, they saw that a table saw had been turned on and a car was idling with a dryer hose running from the exhaust pipe into one of the windows.
“The man turned towards the officers as they came in, and they could see him holding a large knife in his right hand,” ASIRT said.
They said the man didn’t drop the knife despite officers shouting at him to do so.
When one of the officers attempted to back up, he tripped and fell. That’s when the other officer fired off a shot from his gun.
The bullet hit the man in the torso and he fell to the floor. ASIRT said paramedics treated the man on scene but he did not survive his injuries.
An autopsy determined that although the man had suffered injuries “consistent with stab wounds,” the cause of death was a single gunshot wound.
ASIRT said an investigation later revealed that the man had written notes detailing his struggles with his health and “the deterioration of his relationship with his grandson.”
They said one of the notes outlined a plan to attack his grandson and kill himself by carbon monoxide poisoning. Police said the plan detailed in the note was corroborated by a witness.
ASIRT said in a statement that the officers had lawfully entered the garage and that when one of the officers fell, “the courses of action available to the first officer were substantially reduced and the imminence of the threat increased.”
ASIRT executive director Susan D. Hughson said the use of force was reasonable given the circumstances.
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