No answers yet for family of man fatally shot by police

It’s been more than a month since Quinn MacDougall was shot and killed by police outside his Hamilton Mountain townhouse complex, and the teenager’s family say they still don’t have answers about exactly what transpired that April day.

They want to know why the police service’s Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team (MCRRT), which pairs officers with mentalhealth professionals, wasn’t sent; whether the 19-year-old’s life was actually in danger or if the threat made against him over social media was a prank; and what transpired during the three calls to police in which MacDougall asked for help.

“It happened so fast and we still haven’t heard anything from the SIU or anyone else,” said Clara MacDougall, Quinn’s sister.

The 19-year-old was shot by two officers April 3 after he called for help several times that day, believing his life was in danger based on a social media threat. The Special Investigations Unit, a police provincial watchdog, said police fielded two calls about an armed man on Caledon Avenue. They have declined to say whether a weapon was recovered at the scene. Hamilton police have said officers responded to a “threat in progress involving a weapon” and that, on scene, officers “interacted with an adult male.”

Clara, 28, sat in the gallery at Thursday’s police services board meeting, at which members were provided with the 2017 annual report on the service’s Crisis Response Unit. She said she would like to speak to the board next month about why the MCRRT program didn’t respond to her brother’s calls for help that day.

“The second time that he called, he was screaming under duress, saying ‘It’s Quinn MacDougall, there’s someone trying to kill me, please come’,” Clara said. “Like you wouldn’t think someone under that kind of pressure and stress, maybe they’d want to send someone out to help them if they’re having some sort of mental health crisis?”

She said she also plans to call on Hamilton police to wear lapel cameras to ensure transparency for the public. Clara said she wants to try to obtain information related to her brother’s death like 911 calls and hospital records through the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

As the family has been struggling to come to turns with the devastating turn of events, Clara said her mom has been packing up her Caledon Avenue home.

While she didn’t intend to stay there forever, plans to move were sped up because of Quinn’s death.

“Why would you want to keep going down the same street” where he was killed, Clara said.

Heather Doherty, the mother of Quinn’s girlfriend Melanie Schronk, also attended Thursday’s meeting.

She pointed to last month’s deadly van attack in north Toronto, in which the officer who arrested the suspect has been praised for his conduct in the standoff where no shots were fired. The driver claimed he had a gun.

“They didn’t shoot,” she said. “They were able to de-escalate the situation.”