IIO finds officer’s fatal shooting in a Hope hospital ‘reasonable and justified’

Investigators from B.C.'s Independent Investigations Office are seen in this provided image.

British Columbia's police watchdog group has found an RCMP officer to be justified in the shooting and killing of a man in a Hope hospital last year.

The report, published Sept. 27 by the Independent Investigations Office of B.C., found the officer’s use of lethal force to be reasonable and justified.

According to a detailed narrative of events given in the report, police were called to the hospital June 28, 2023, following reports a male patient was threatening a female companion held in a separate treatment unit.

Both patients had been involved in a two-car collision near Highway 5 after the man, who had been experiencing mental health issues with suicidal ideation, purposefully crashed head-on into a pickup truck parked in a construction site.

The two former partners had been placed at opposite ends of a hallway in the hospital after the woman disclosed the man had threatened to kill himself and her, the report stated.

The supervising officer, one of three officers to arrive at the hospital, found he had grounds to arrest the man but was aware of a mental condition that needed to be assessed before he could do so, he told the IIO.

According to the report the man was in bed at the time, being tended to by medical staff in an emergency treatment area.

As a second officer sat in an area near the treatment room to watch over the man, the supervising officer received a call from the subject officer, the officer being investigated, explaining the man was “refusing all medical treatment,” the report reads.

The supervising officer, concerned that the man might discharge himself, instructed the subject officer to place him under arrest, according to the report.

The second officer, who had taken a seat in the treatment room nearby, said he heard the subject officer arrest the man and start to inform him of his Charter rights.

In the second officer’s statement to the IIO, he said he had heard the subject officer say “Hey, sit down” before quickly backing away saying “knife, knife, knife.” As the subject officer ran backwards along the hallway he had been telling the man to “drop the knife, drop the knife,” the second officer reported.

“These commands were also heard by civilian and hospital staff witnesses interviewed by the IIO,” the report reads.

The subject officer retreated further into the hospital near the Emergency Department exit, close to where the woman patient was being treated, said the report.

“When the subject officer reached the end of the hallway the risk of harm increased, as [the man] was now close to both the exit and to the treatment area where the female passenger had been placed,” reads the report.

“The subject officer would have realized that it was no longer only his safety that was threatened, but also the lives and safety of others,” the IIO said.

At the same moment the second officer fired his stun gun at the man from behind, the subject officer fired four rounds from his service pistol, fatally wounding him, the report said.

“His use of lethal force in those circumstances was reasonable and justified,” the report concludes.