Officer had previous fatal shooting
The officer who fatally shot and killed 29-year-old Stacey Perry on Dec. 25, 2018, mortally wounded a Calgary man in 2011.
Const. Stephen Cook, a 10-year veteran with the Calgary Police Service, fired at Perry after she pinned a female officer following a spree of dangerous driving.
The shooting is being investigated by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team. Cook is on a 30day administrative leave.
In 2011, Cook shot Corwin (Corey) Peeace, 40, four times after breaching an Erin Woods home.
During a subsequent fatality inquiry in 2013, Cook told his lawyer, Willie deWit, that he was dispatched to the home after Peeace’s common-law spouse, Vanessa Severight, called 911.
On the call, a male in the background could be overheard saying, “You are going to die tonight.” Cook said he drew his firearm, kicked in the door and, based on what he said was an imminent threat, shot Peeace four times. “If he had brought the knife down, he would have stabbed her in the neck or shoulder area. I believed he was about to stab this female and I expected she was going to die today, as I heard,” Cook said.
Just after midnight on Christmas morning, Perry was driving erratically near 9th Avenue and Blackfoot Trail S.E. in a grey Honda Accord coupe with a B.C. licence plate. Officers tried to stop her vehicle on suspicion of impaired driving. However, she failed to pull over.
Two more traffic stops were attempted, also unsuccessfully, around 12:30 a.m. Police stopped following the vehicle about 10 minutes later, citing “safety reasons.”
Less than two hours later, police received a call about a driver “running red lights and doing U-turns” in the northeast community of Falconridge. Officers located the same grey Honda from earlier, being driven the wrong way into oncoming lanes of traffic throughout northeast Calgary.
Police attempted a controlled stop of the two-door car, which was entering onto McKnight Boulevard from Stoney Trail, by positioning a police vehicle in the front of the coupe and additional police vehicles on each side of, and behind, the car.
As officers began to exit their vehicles, “the sedan was put in motion,” according to ASIRT in a statement.
Perry’s ex-boyfriend, Vincent Church, said she battled alcohol and substance abuse issues in the past and was known to panic.
“(The day she was shot) she may have undoubtedly had a bad time, or bad episode or somebody threatened her or did something to her to cause her to panic,” he said.
“It would probably give her the fight or flight reflexes and when she became distressed, she didn’t always make the best decisions.”
In a statement, Calgary Police Association president Les Kaminski said officers come to work with the hope they don’t have to use force on another individual.
“However, it is our duty to protect the public, other officers, and ourselves. This is the harsh reality of police work,” he said in a statement.