Man, 55, identified as police shooting victim
Vitaly Savin, 55, is the man shot dead by a police officer following a traffic stop in southwest Edmonton on Thursday, sources confirm.
Savin’s Facebook page has since been memorialized, with condolences as well as arguments written in Russian on his last status update about cheering for a Russian team, posted about an hour before his death.
One person wrote a wish for him to always be remembered.
Police said an officer was responding to two calls from the public of a suspected impaired driver. According to the police statement on Thursday, the officer — a six-year veteran of the force — pulled over a silver minivan around 1:43 p.m. near Hollands Landing.
Both the officer and the 55-yearold man exited their vehicles.
Aman Jaggi, a neighbour who spoke to officers in the aftermath of the shooting, said he saw the officer performing CPR.
Jaggi said he heard four gunshots as he was getting ready for work.
He told Postmedia the officer had been moving backwards when he slipped on ice, then fired his gun.
In a statement to the media on Thursday, police said they believe the man who was killed has family in Edmonton and that they are reaching out to them to offer condolences.
The officer has been placed on administrative leave, in accordance with city police protocol.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team is investigating the death. According to a news release issued Friday, a large hunting knife was found beside the dead man.
In a recent city police-involved shooting death, ASIRT cleared officers of any wrongdoing on Nov. 25, 2016, for the Dec. 27, 2015, shooting death of a 50-year-old man who had four times the legal limit of blood alcohol concentration and who was advancing towards officers with what appeared to be a long-barrelled gun.