First look at officer who shot Andrew Loku
Cop reveals his account of 2015 confrontation and the 21 seconds that led to fatal gunfire
Twenty-one seconds.
The moments that tick-tick-ticked between a cop responding to a “hotshot” call at a midtown residential build- ing and the fatal double-discharging of his firearm.
Andrew Loku dropped straight down on his face, the hammer he’d been wielding flying out of his hand.
Const. Andrew Doyle hadn’t been alone when he raced up the stairs to the thirdfloor hallway. Partner Haim “Jimmy” Queroub, only a month on the Toronto police force, was standing just behind him. Doyle, a 13-year veteran, was the “coach officer” for the raw rookie.
“Shot fired, one down,” Doyle spoke into his shoulder microphone, alerting the dispatcher.
Seconds later: “I need EMS here NOW!”
But there was nothing to be done for Loku, a 45-year-old refugee from South Sudan with mental-health problems and a resident of that Toronto apartment building, where units were leased for vulnerable tenants by the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Doyle didn’t know any of those details, was aware only that a middle-aged “African” male armed with a hammer had threatened somebody.
He’d been on patrol with his partner when the radio squawked out that information and an address.
“You spent two-and-a-half minutes getting there,” the Loku family lawyer, Jonathan Shime, pointed out to Doyle.
Two-and-a-half minutes with no discussion between the officers of how they would approach the situation or who would assume the lead role in potentially dealing with the suspect.
“You spent 21 seconds doing nothing but screaming at Mr. Loku to drop his hammer. Do you agree with that?” Yes, Doyle agreed. Twenty-one seconds — as Shime determined — with two men shouting orders to drop the hammer, which Loku ignored as he began walking toward them, visibly tightening the grip on his weapon, not-so-visibly (on security camera footage) raising his arm as if to strike.
Bouncing off a wall, spreading out his hands as if in a shrug, but then no further video evidence, no footage of what transpired within a mere few heartbeats.
At this crucial juncture of the confrontation, we now have Doyle’s firsthand account of those events. On Wednesday, at a coroner’s inquest, the officer spoke publicly for the first time, summoned to testify two years after being cleared of any wrongdoing by the Special Investigations Unit, not even his identity revealed until last week.
To begin, Doyle described the sequence of events under questioning by Michael Blain, lawyer for the coroner, Dr. John Carlisle. How he’d spotted Loku about 25 feet away along the dimly lit hallway, a man matching the dispatcher’s description. But, oddly, he has no memory of another witness who’d also been standing near Loku when the officers arrived. Loku was leaning inside an open doorway, gesturing with his hands.
“A male trying to get into an apartment to potentially kill the complainant’s friend.” That complainant, Doyle assumed from the dispatcher’s callout, was the person who’d called police about a man threatening to kill her friend. “So I believed I was at the right place.”
In clipped testimony, he continued: “I immediately called out to him. I said, ‘SIR,’ loudly as I could.”
Loku pivoted and Doyle saw the hammer he was holding.
“Loudly is to get his attention immediately, and I did.’’
“When I saw that he actually did have a hammer, I unholstered my firearm and I pointed my firearm at him in a two-handed grip.” “POLICE! DON’T MOVE. DROP THE HAMMER.”
Why did he draw his weapon so hastily, without attempting to deescalate the situation?
“A hammer is something that can cause immediate bodily harm or death. You get hit with a hammer? You can get killed.”
The use-of-force framework drilled into officers, Doyle explained, allows them to assess threat and determine response. “That threat that he presented to me was an immediate risk of bodily harm or death. The response to that particular level of threat is a firearm response rather than a pepper spray, rather than a baton response. That threat that he presented to me was an immediate risk of bodily harm or death.’’
Still 25 feet away, yet Doyle — processing information on the chest-thumping fly, with his many years experience of how instantly a situation can spiral into havoc — believed the man was an imminent threat. “Absolutely. I’m very aware of how fast one human being can travel to get to another human being and 25 feet is not a very long distance at all.”
The commands Doyle chose, he explained, were deliberate. “I wanted his attention. I wanted him to listen to me.”
But Loku, heedless, walked directly toward him.
“I’m now screaming at him. ‘POLICE. STOP. DROP IT. DROP THE HAMMER.’ He walks towards me and he never stops.”
Loku raised his hands, a grip on the base of the hammer, claw side facing backward. “He raised it up over his head as he was walking towards me.’’
If Loku was saying anything, Doyle couldn’t remember. “I don’t consciously hear words. It’s so loud in there. It’s an echo chamber, basically. It was a chaotic scene.’’
But of course it was loud because Doyle and his partner were shouting.
Doyle told Blain he never contemplated an alternative communications strategy. “I was afraid for my life.
“He doesn’t stop approaching. He doesn’t drop the hammer. He doesn’t listen to any of my commands. And he just keeps closing the distance on me, step after step after step, getting closer and closer.”
Now Loku is about 10 feet away. “I felt, with the hammer up above his head, within a step or two he would easily be able to reach me and hit me with it or hit my partner with it. So I discharged my firearm. Twice.”
Aimed, as he was trained, for centre mass. “I fired my firearm twice and the threat was successfully stopped.”
That was good enough for the SIU. Not good enough for many factions of the public, including 10 organizations — from the CMHA to the Black Action Defence Committee — which have been granted standing at the inquest.
There is always the boilerplate proviso about coroner’s inquests: Intended not to apportion blame but to probe circumstances of death, make recommendations that might help avert a similar death in the future, and, sometimes, examine broader social issues. In this instance, those social issues range from how police interact with mentally ill individuals in crisis to the role race plays in such confrontations. In truth, however, blame is often the subtext. What could have been done, what should have been done, with every step of an incident laboriously, retrospectively, and theoretically parsed.
With family lawyer Shime asking the questions next, Doyle agreed he hadn’t thought about just stepping back, closing the landing door behind him and waiting for backup. “I didn’t know there was a door there.”
After shooting Loku, Doyle first checked him for other weapons, then noticed the pooling blood. Somebody attempted CPR. “I believe I was in a state of shock. It felt like time was standing still.”
Before turning proceedings over to other lawyers, Shime asked Doyle if there was anything he wished to say to Loku’s family, now that he had the opportunity.
Doyle appeared startled but collected his wits quickly enough.
“I can begin by saying that this entire event was an absolute tragedy for everybody.
“This is not the result anybody wanted, especially me. I am absolutely devastated by this. And I’m sorry this was the end result of a situation I was involved in.” Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.