‘Justified at law’
Investigator concludes Summerside officers involved in 2018 police-involved shooting should not be charged
SUMMERSIDE – There will be no charges laid against the Summerside Police Services officers who shot and killed Jeremy Stephens.
The Nova Scotia Serious Incident Response Team (SiRT) concluded its investigation into the death of the 32-year-old Summerside man. Stephens was shot by officers on May 27, 2018, as they tried to arrest him on suspicion of his involvement in a violent robbery at a Summerside hotel the night before.
The SiRT investigation into the shooting took nearly nine months to complete. The results were released late Tuesday afternoon by the Office of the P.E.I. Police Commissioner.
The report concluded “the officer had the right to use lethal force against the suspect if it was reasonable to believe the suspect posed a risk of death or grievous bodily harm to him or others. In the circumstances, the risk was clear.”
According to the summary of the report, three officers chased Stephens into a darkened home during a scheduled power outage. They searched the home and found him in the basement.
The officers repeatedly ordered Stephens to surrender, but he broke an arm off a nearby chair and reportedly told officers to kill him.
Stephens confronted the first officer, who backed away from the suspect but tripped over something in the cluttered and darkened basement. The officer’s gun went off and Stephens was shot.
“Continual commands were yelled to the suspect to drop his weapon and go to the ground, but these too were ignored. The suspect then picked up a golf club and swung it at the officer’s head, missing it by less than a foot. The officer fired two more rounds. The suspect moved away from the second officer and back towards the first officer. As the suspect approached the first officer, the officer, fearing for his safety, opened fire and discharged six rounds.”
Unbeknownst to any officers at the time of the shooting was the fact that Stephens had told other people hours earlier he believed he was wanted by the police for something which could get him 10 to 15 years in jail and had stated “absolutely no way that I am going back to jail you guys, I hope you know what that means” and also said that if the police tried to arrest him “I will cut one of them”.
Also contained in the report were results of an analysis of the Stephens’s blood, as contained in a toxicology report. It showed the presence of THC, amphetamine and methamphetamine.
The report called Stephens’s irrational behaviour typical of someone with high concentrations of those drugs in their system.
Given the circumstances, SiRT Director Felix Cacchione concluded that the officers were justified in shooting Stephens.
“In these circumstances there are no grounds to consider any charges against the officers. Their actions were justified at law,” said Cacchione.