IIO director testifies at inquest into death of suicidal B.C. man shot by police

On the second to last day of a coroner's Inquest into the death of a man who calmly explained to police how he wanted them to kill him, the civilian director of the Independent Investigations Office took the stand to explain why his investigators did not interview key RCMP personnel involved in the man's death.

Barry Shantz, 63, was armed with a shotgun on the January day in 2020 when his partner called 911 to report he was suicidal.

When the first two officers arrived at the home on the Skuppah Reserve near Lytton, Shantz yelled at them and fired a single shot into the air from an upstairs window.

He would later call 911 and explain to police that he planned to exit the home at 2:06 p.m.with the shotgun in his hands and wanted police to shoot him six times in the chest.

"I prefer some really nice precision shooting here today," Shantz said.

Insp. Steve McLeod was the RCMP critical incident commander that day and as Emergency Response Team members arrived over a period of several hours he authorized them to use lethal force against Shantz if he exited the house with the shotgun in his hand.

Shantz walked out of the house with the shotgun shortly after 2 p.m. and an RCMP sniper shot and killed him just as Shantz had requested.

Last week, McLeod told the inquest he had not been interviewed by the IIO, the provincial police watchdog that must investigate every police-involved death in B.C.

In October 2020, the IIO released a report clearing officers of any wrongdoing in Shantz's death.

On Tuesday at the coroner’s Inquest, a juror asked IIO civilian director Ronald MacDonald about procedures around interviewing commanding officers after an incident.

"Is it common to not interview the critical incident commander?" the juror asked.

“It all depends on the circumstances," MacDonald replied. "Whether or not we believe the decisions of the critical incident commander are critical."

The inquest has also heard the IIO did not interview the RCMP crisis negotiator who spoke with Shantz on the day of his death.

Const. Rupert Meinke also testified that audio recordings of his calls with Shantz had gone missing and were not available for the IIO or the coroner's Inquest.

Meinke told the inquest the crisis negotiating team made several attempts to reach an on-call psychologist contracted to help the RCMP in situations involving people in mental health crisis.

He testified voicemails left for the psychologist were not returned until two weeks after police shot and killed Shantz.

Meinke testified he thought Shantz was set on carrying out his plan and would not have been swayed even if he had been able to speak with a mental health professional.

"I believe having mental health support would have been helpful to me," Meinke testified. "But again, to be totally honest my feeling was he was going to carry out this act regardless."