Widow `beyond surprised' standoff turned fatal
Hours before he was fatally shot by police, Patrick Kimmel's common-law wife said she believed he had agreed to surrender.
A week after his death, Michele Siebold stood in the rear doorway of the Penswood Way S.E. home, its walls marked by blood spatters and bullet holes where she said her spouse died in a hail of police gunfire around 8:30 p.m. on March 15.
“This is where he was shot and killed,” said Siebold, stepping over a dried pool of blood on the floor.
A black beanie often worn by Kimmel, 45, lay on basement steps near a wooden beam just inside the doorway bearing investigators' measuring tape tracing eight closely grouped bullet holes.
But Siebold said she was stunned by the news her husband was shot by police 30 hours into a standoff that began on the afternoon of March 14 when officers said they were greeted by gunfire when executing a search warrant.
Siebold said police were responding to a call about concern over the safety of her two children, which she insists was unfounded.
About four or five hours before his death, after she'd spent numerous hours alongside police trying to coax him out of the bungalow, Siebold said she was at CPS headquarters in northeast Calgary when officers told her they had come to an understanding with Kimmel.
“They said, `We have an agreement,' that they thought they'd come up with a plan,” she said.
“I don't know what happened between 4 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. (Friday) ... I only saw that he'd been killed on the news — I was beyond surprised.”
Last Friday, the woman and Kimmel's brother Michael picked through the upended furniture of a house whose walls were punched in by large police projectiles.
A week later, the remnants of tear gas still irritated the eyes, throat and nostrils.
They accused police of gratuitously ransacking their home following the standoff.
Siebold said on March 14, police arrived without calling or knocking on their door but fired a projectile through a basement window and called over a megaphone for Kimmel to come out of the house.
She said they were alarmed by the aggressive approach, particularly after the couple dealt with officers amicably the previous day when they reported an attempt to steal one of their vehicles.
“There was a good resolution — they weren't scared of Pat then,” said Siebold, 33.
After spending 20 minutes trying to convince her husband to leave the home, Siebold said she exited with her eight-year-old son, grandfather, 92, and her 65-yearold mother, worried of what might come next.
Kimmel, 45, who she had been with off and on for the past decade, feared going back to prison and was vehement he wouldn't.
“Regardless, if he was going in for a day or a year or 10 years, he wasn't going to do it,” she said.
“When we went out we said goodbye, he said he was probably not going to make it out of here.”
She said frustrations over the parole system and his seemingly fruitless efforts to meet their demands had boiled over.
Said his brother Michael: “He said he'd never let the police put him in handcuffs again because he was always abused.”
Siebold said she was outside the house when gunfire erupted and was hustled to safety by a pair of undercover officers.
“(Police) told me it was him who fired first,” she said.
In that initial exchange, Siebold said her husband was struck in the left arm and right cheek.
Among upturned items in the couple's bedroom tossed about by water pumped in to flush out Kimmel was a bloodstained mattress where he probably laid after being shot, she said.
Police say the man they killed had a long criminal record.
In 2019, Kimmel was sentenced in a Drumheller court to 16 months jail time on 2018 charges that included uttering threats and assault.
He had also been arrested for a September 2021 armed home invasion robbery in Drumheller in which no one was injured.
Those charges were stayed in May 2022, but, reportedly, Parole
Board of Canada documents indicate his day parole was revoked that same year due to substance abuse and a relationship violation.
He was convicted of a Calgary charge of possession of a loaded, prohibited or restricted firearm on Dec. 20, 2021, and given a 2½year prison term and a weapons prohibition.
But after being released from prison last summer he had done well, said Siebold, was happy and it wasn't his intention to die at the hands of police during the standoff.
“He was 45 but it was like he was 25 — things were going great,” she said.
After the March 14-15 drama began, Siebold said she spent 18½ hours on the phone trying to convince her husband to surrender, insisting he needed medical help and even offered herself as “bait.”
“One idea was that he could spend some time with me at (CPS headquarters before being incarcerated),” she said, adding he requested cigarettes and pizza.
“I told him, `No matter what happens, I will visit you in jail' ... a couple of times we almost had him (out).”
And she and Michael Kimmel said they don't believe the dead man was firing directly at police during the 30-hour standoff, but rather squeezed out rounds vertically or over officers' heads from his .22-calibre firearm.
Bullet holes scarring the home's basement ceiling, said Siebold, were fired by her husband.
“Pat would never want to kill anyone even though they were police officers and he hates them ... he was doing it to warn them,”
she said, adding she was previously unaware Kimmel had guns in the house.
Kimmel's brother said his sibling was a crack shot, that they had spent hours shooting at rural properties “and he rarely missed.”
Police say Kimmel fired more than 100 rounds during the incident in which neighbours were told to shelter in place.
There were no bullet holes readily apparent in adjacent vehicles or buildings, and neighbours Postmedia spoke to on March 16 said they couldn't find any.
A CPS spokeswoman said they can't comment on the case because it's under investigation by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.
But in a tweet the day after the standoff ended, Calgary Police Chief Mark Neufeld said Kimmel was the violent author of his demise.
“A tragic outcome, but one dictated by a subject who chose to threaten and demonstrate extremely violent behaviour over an extended period. I'm proud of our officers,” he said.
“They did their best to manage this toward a peaceful resolution. I'm relieved no officers or residents were harmed.”
And in a Global News interview broadcast Thursday, Neufeld reiterated that his personnel handled the situation admirably.
“Those (choices on ending the standoff) are very heavy decisions to make, frankly, and I'm very proud of the folks who made them in this case over 30 hours,” said Neufeld.
“How much time should police
spend in saving a person's life — is it 30 hours, is it 24?”
No specific police officer came close to being shot by Kimmel because they were sheltered in a CPS armoured tactical vehicle and another one supplied by the RCMP, he said.
“We had people quite close up but we had armoured vehicles ... the rounds that were coming out of the house in some cases were coming toward our armoured vehicle,” said Neufeld.
“Situations like these underscore why we have these pieces of equipment.”
In a press release, police said the incident came to an end after it “escalated” at around 8:30 p.m. Friday “and members of our tactical unit, along with members of the RCMP Emergency Response Team, were required to discharge their service weapons and one man has been declared deceased.”
Police haven't disclosed how that escalation occurred.
In a video recorded early Friday evening by a neighbour shortly before Kimmel's death, a Calgary police officer can be heard on their doorstep saying they were going to “amp things up a little bit.”
Despite his run-ins with the law, Siebold and his brother said Kimmel was a kind and giving man who enjoyed glass work and the sport of fencing.
But his widow said she can't help but feel some anger toward him for not surrendering.
“I'm angry but I'm also sad,” said Siebold.
“I can understand Pat's side of it, but then I can't.”