Shooting was over in ‘two minutes’

The police shooting of a mentally ill man in 2014 on a busy Vancouver corner was over in “two minutes,” said a motorist who witnessed the shooting while he waited to cross the street.

Patrick Kelly was stopped at a red light at 41st Avenue and Knight Street on Nov. 22, 2014 when he noticed a police car and three uniformed and armed police officers. By the time the light turned green, he said the officers had shot Phuong Na (Tony) Du.

“The whole thing happened in two minutes because that’s how long the light takes to change,” Kelly testified at the first day of the coroner’s inquest into Du’s death.

He was one of three witnesses who watched from metres away as police drove up, removed a long gun from the trunk of the car and, Kelly said, yelled at Du.

“They yelled for him to drop whatever he was carrying, then he pointed it toward them and headed toward them,” Kelly said.

He described how the scene unfolded so quickly that eastbound cars on 41st Avenue turning left on to Knight continued to turn left and drove around Du’s body as it lay in the street.

Kelly’s testimony differed from the other two witnesses in some respects, but all three said they recalled how Du was swinging a long stick or board with two hands and approached the officers. One officer first tried to subdue him with a bean bag gun but it didn’t work and he continued advancing toward them when he was shot.

Du died later in hospital. Also testifying was Wayne Klyne, who said he called 911 when he saw a man swinging a board and yelling in what he said was Chinese on that day at around 5 p.m.

“I was worried about him, it looked like he was in trouble,” Klyne said. “He was shouting and ranting and raving.”

The 911 recording was played in the hearing and Klyne is heard describing what he’s seeing. “He’s screaming and hollering and he’s waving it around,” according to the audio.

“They’re getting a gun out of the trunk of the car, they’re walking toward him. He just swung the bat at the police officer!”

Klyne had made the call from the Duffin’s Donuts shop at the corner, but walked up to the intersection and saw the feathers come out of Du’s down-filled jacket when he was hit by two bullets.

He said he called 911 because “he was scaring people, so I thought the best thing I could do was call the police. I was of the opinion he was off his meds.”

The inquest, which is scheduled for five days, also heard that Du was a gambling addict who had been barred from casinos and had lived with schizophrenia for more than 25 years.

Four months before he was killed, Du had been admitted to Richmond hospital after threatening to kill someone outside a casino, the inquest heard.

Du’s doctor described him as a “chronic schizophrenic who had been taking antipsychotic drugs for over 25 years.”

He was causing a disturbance outside a Richmond casino, “saying that he wanted to kill someone,” and kicking over garbage cans, according to hospital notes.

He told police he “lived in the sky” and that he had stopped taking his medications.

Camai Weaver of Pivot Legal Society, which is working with the family ’s lawyer during the inquest, noted outside court that Du was subdued during the casino incident without police using lethal force.

Pivot is recommending a series of changes for police dealing with people with mental illness, including more crisis training for officers and 911 call takers and wherever possible the use of shields as opposed to guns and Tasers when dealing with a person in distress where violence is possible.