Police officer cleared of wrongdoing in Boxing Day death in Lakefield

Special Investigations Unit called to investigate Dec. 26, 2023 incident

Editor’s Note: This article contains descriptions and references to suicide that may be upsetting or disturbing for some readers. Mental health support is available by calling the Suicide Crisis Helpline at 988.

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has cleared a Peterborough Police officer of wrongdoing following the death of a 40-year-old man in Lakefield on Dec. 26, 2023, shortly after the officer was struck in the face with a baseball bat.

According to a report issued by the SIU on Wednesday, Peterborough police were called around 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 26. A woman had contacted the Peterborough Police Service to report that her son — who had mental-health issues — was suicidal and alone in his apartment on Queen Street in Lakefield.

The mother had received text messages from her son saying he was alone and planned to hang himself, the report states, and he’d further texted her a photo of a noose.

When a city police officer arrived at the apartment, the man opened the door told the officer to leave, closing and locking the door behind him, states the SIU report.

When the mother arrived at the scene moments later, she gave an apartment key to the officer. The report goes on to read when the officer used the key to open the door, the man confronted him with a metal baseball bat that he used to cross-check the officer in the face.

The officer withdrew from the door and, hearing banging noises from inside the apartment, he called and waited for two additional officers to arrive, reads the report.

Two officers arrived with a shield, a stun gun and a ram and after calling out to the man — and receiving no response — the three officers together forced open the apartment door.

Inside the apartment, the officers found the man lying unresponsive on the kitchen floor with a rope around his neck, the report states. The first officer began CPR, and although paramedics quickly arrived to take over the man’s care, he was pronounced deceased on the scene at 2:27 a.m., the report states.

An autopsy attributed the death to hanging, according to the report.

Following an investigation, SIU director Joseph Martino found no reasonable grounds to believe the officer had committed a criminal offence.

The officer showed “care and regard” for the man’s well-being, Martino writes, and he “was right” to have waited for the two additional officers to arrive before entering the apartment again.

Marino writes that while waiting for backup, the officer had continued trying to reach the man inside his apartment by text and when the three officers later entered the apartment and found the man unresponsive, they quickly started CPR.

The SIU is an independent government agency which investigates cases where death, injury or sexual assault happen during interactions with police.