Justice is in short supply for dead child

A truck without a child’s car seat, an armed and unhinged father — possibly suicidal, possibly homicidal — behind the wheel.

There was arguably no way this horrible scenario could have ended other than with a dead toddler and a fatally wounded driver.

But the jury that would have decided that at trial never got the chance because the prosecution suddenly dropped all charges against the three involved OPP police officers on Monday.

So, the evidence will never be heard, witnesses never cross-examined and the accused never testifying in their own defence — had they chosen to take the stand. Doubtless the officers are relieved that it never came to that.

But hearing from the defendants in their own words — not in the summation of an agreed statement of facts — would have been worthwhile.

The Special Investigations Unit obviously believed there were reasonable grounds — on the lower threshold of evidence, not on a balance of probabilities or beyond reasonable doubt — to lay charges of manslaughter, aggravated assault and reckless discharge of a firearm against Constables Nathan Vanderheyden, Kenneth Pengelly and Grayson Cappus. Crown attorney Ian Bulmer determined differently — that there was no reasonable prospect of conviction. That calculation is always at the discretion of the prosecution.

Justice in a courtroom short-circuited for 18-month-old Jameson Shapiro.

“While the evidence establishes that Jameson Shapiro died as the result of at least one police-fired bullet, the Crown has concluded that, for the purposes of this criminal prosecution, his death was the tragic, unintended consequence of shots fired by the defendants in a genuine situation of self-defence,” Bulmer told Judge Paul Bellefontaine.

That conclusion was reached after the prosecution recently received the officers’ notes — notes they didn’t hand over to SIU investigators, as was their legal right — notes the defence ultimately shared with the prosecution, in an unusual move. Notes that might have led the SIU to decide against levelling charges, bringing this four-year ordeal to an end long ago.

One officer, Vanderheyden, fired 25 rounds from his Colt C8 semi-automatic rifle, from a distance of between six and seven feet. Cappus fired his Glock handgun 17 times. Pengelly fired his rifle three times. Forty-five shots were fired at and into the Toyota Tundra pickup that had approached at speed — up to nearly 180 kilometres an hour — before it sharply veered away from the spike belt that had been laid down across the westbound lane of Pigeon Lake Road, barrelling into the cruiser of Const. Chris Dobbs, who had been crouching in front of it. Dobbs was nearly killed, suffering “catastrophic” injuries, including a broken neck, back and two fractured legs.

William Shapiro had seized his young son from his estranged wife in the middle of the night, threatening murder.

Deeply disturbed and violent — he’d previously tried to strangle his own mother and assaulted his exspouse and was flagged for unpredictable behaviour — the 33-yearold had brandished a stolen Colt .45 handgun.

Transcripts, documents and audio released Monday shed more light on what happened as police officers received confusing and contradictory information from the dispatcher, amid the chaos of an urgent response. Of keenest concern was whether the toddler was in the truck with his father. First the answer was no, then the answer was yes.

It was Vanderheyden who first spotted the truck and confirmed that he could see Shapiro holding a handgun out the window. Vanderheyden warned officers laying down the spike belt to be careful and take cover.

“He’s pretty desperate, he had a gun to his head, just make sure if he tries to go straight into your cruiser or something, just make sure you’ve got some sort of cover buddy,” he said.

And it was Vanderheyden who, after the collision, fired the first shots downwards into the truck’s driver’s seat after spotting movement from behind the deployed airbag and repeatedly demanding Shapiro drop his weapon. To which Shapiro repeatedly responded: “F--k you.” So more shots were fired by all three officers, all aimed at the driver’s side area of the vehicle. It was reasonable, in those split seconds, to believe the child was in the back seat.

He was not. He was in his father’s lap.

The toddler had survived the collision but he was struck by four gunshots, the fatal bullet entering at the base of his skull. Shapiro suffered multiple gunshot wounds and died a week later in hospital.

Forensics would later discover that Shapiro’s Colt had jammed, possibly while it was being loaded. He would not have been able to fire it if he’d pulled the trigger.

It is indeed a tragedy for everyone, no less the officers who will live with this hellish memory forever.

Maybe a coroner’s inquest, as Bulmer suggested, will resolve some of the unsettled questions.

But, they should have been asked and answered at trial.