Victim, police officer had history
Deceased Tasered twice before by same constable
More than 15 months before Corwin (Corey) Peeace was fatally shot by a city police officer he was Tasered twice by the same man, a fatality inquiry was told on Monday.
Peeace, 40, was shot by an officer responding to a domestic incident at his Calgary home on June 10, 2011.
Alberta Serious Incident Response team (ASIRT) investigator Kevin Kunatzki told the inquiry that Peeace was under a courtordered one-year peace bond stemming from a Feb. 28, 2010 incident where he was Tasered twice when he resisted arrest and assaulted a peace officer.
The peace bond was to remain in effect until Aug. 2, 2011.
As part of the bond, he was to take an anger management course, not to possess any weapons and not to consume any non-prescription drugs or alcohol.
On the night of his death he was wielding a knife and had a bloodalcohol level of .19 — more than double the legal driving limit.
Kunatzki said Const. Steven Cook, a three-year Calgary Police Service veteran, was not aware at the time of the second call he was investigating the same man whom he had previously Tasered.
The inquiry heard Cook had kicked open the door and saw Peeace with a knife held high and he feared the man was going to injure or kill a woman standing beside him.
When Peeace did not heed his warnings to put the knife down, he fired four shots into his chest and arm.
Kunatzki told Alberta Justice lawyer Cynthia Hykaway several witnesses reported Peeace made comments that indicated he was suicidal.
A 911 phone call from Peeace’s common-law wife Vanessa Severight, about eight minutes before the shooting, was played in court. In the call Peeace can be heard in the background yelling “I’m gonna die today, this is the day I’m gonna die”; “I’m not going down without a fight”; and “I’m gonna take out the cops, they’re gonna take out me.”
It was concluded by ASIRT there would be no criminal charges laid against Cook or any other officer involved in the shooting.
On the night he died, Peeace and his wife had been heavily drinking alcohol and arguing over his alleged infidelity and a package of cigarettes. Severight, the mother of their three children, testified she was very intoxicated that night and could remember very little of what occurred. She said she was not in the same room when the shooting occurred but ran there when she heard the shots.
“When I called, I didn’t call because he was hitting or assaulting me,” she said. “We were arguing, I wanted it to stop. Every time I call police, it is to take him out of the home and to his mother’s place until he sobered up.
“When he was shot, I came out of my blackout then I remembered being over him to see if he was OK. Then I got pulled off him and thrown into the back of a cop car.”
Under cross-examination by Cook’s lawyer Willie deWit, Severight said she had never heard her husband saying goodbye to his children because he was planning on killing himself. She said there has been a picture painted of her husband that he was a drunk and a violent man, but she disputed that.
“He was a hard-working man who provided for his kids ... and he would never hurt a fly. It didn’t have to turn
It didn’t have to turn out the way it did COMMON-LAW WIFE VANESSA SEVERIGHT
out the way it did.”
Severight accused Cook of intentionally taking the 911 call, because Peeace was going to sue the officer that Tasered him. She accused him of waiting for an opportunity to get her husband.
However, Calgary Police Service lawyer John Cordeau noted Cook was seven kilometres from the scene when he took the call and did not know he was headed to the same residence from more than a year prior.
The inquiry before provincial court Judge Harry Van Harten continues all week.