Calgary officer cleared in shooting
Man armed with pellet gun killed in 2014 incident
A provincial police watchdog has cleared a Calgary police officer who shot and killed an armed man in a downtown apartment building two years ago.
According to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, or ASIRT, police were called just after 2 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2014, to the second-floor hallway of 433 Macleod Trail S.E. for a report of a man with a gun who threatened another man in the building.
Four armed officers — two with C8 carbine rifles, one with a shotgun, and the last with his service pistol — arrived and contained the scene at Langin Place.
In a statement, ASIRT said there were alcoves on the north side of the second-floor hallway, which provided “only limited cover for police officers, depending on distance and angle.”
When officers failed to reach the man by phone, they were directed by an on-scene supervisor to make an arrest. They knocked on the door, announced their presence, and backed away to the nearest alcove, waiting for a response.
A 30-year-old man came out of the suite, carrying in his right hand what appeared to be a handgun, holding it flat against his chest with the gun barrel pointed to his left, away from the officers who were in the alcove on the man’s right.
“As one of the officers yelled ‘gun,’ the man turned to his right, and angled the barrel of the gun towards the officers,” ASIRT said.
The officer closest to the suite fired his C8 rifle twice. One shot hit the man in the left side of his torso and the other hit the wall.
The man then returned his suite and partially closed the door. When officers called out for him to come out, they received no response.
A remote-controlled robot with a camera was sent in to check on him; it showed him lying motionless on the floor. Tactical members declared him dead at the scene.
No officers were injured and the building had been evacuated for the safety of the other residents.
The handgun the man was holding was later determined to be a black Crosman “Walther PPK” CO2-powered pellet pistol, manufactured to look like a Walther PPK semi-automatic pistol. It was not functioning and incapable of firing shots, ASIRT said.
An autopsy confirmed he died of a single gunshot wound to the left side of his torso. He was under the influence of alcohol.
ASIRT said earlier, around 1:30 a.m., the man had a confrontation with another resident, who claimed the man pulled out a handgun, “racked it,” and pointed it at him. The resident told the man to go to bed or he would alert police, but never made the call.
ASIRT cleared the officer who fired the fatal shot, determining that he “was faced with what appeared to be an immediate lethal threat and there was objectively reasonable grounds to believe that the use of lethal force was required to prevent imminent death or grievous bodily harm to both himself and the other officers on scene.”