Son says hostage taker was a ‘loving’ person

BURNABY — A British Columbia coroner’s jury has heard that a man who held his partner hostage and died in a spray of RCMP gunfire was a loving man who didn’t have the opportunity to “get clean” from his drug addictions.

A statement written by Jamie Perrin was read at the opening of the coroner’s inquest into the deaths of his father Randy Crosson and Crosson’s girlfriend Nona McEwan in a home in Surrey, B.C., in March 2019.

Perrin’s statement said his father had a hard life and “didn’t have the opportunities to get better and to get clean.”

“What you are about to hear is about a man on drugs, struggling with life. But this was not my dad. My dad was a loving, caring person who loved all us kids. I’m sorry for what he has done with life but hopefully today we can learn from this,” he said in the statement on Tuesday.

B.C.’s police watchdog cleared police of wrongdoing in a report that said RCMP officers shot and killed Crosson, but also accidentally hit McEwan with two bullets. She later died in hospital.

The Independent Investigations Office said McEwan’s death was because of the actions of Crosson, who held her in front of him as a shield against police bullets.

Its report said officers entered a home and found Crosson holding a knife to the woman’s neck with what appeared to be a gun in his other hand.

The office said a number of officers shot at Crosson, killing him at the scene, but McEwan was accidentally struck.

Forensic investigators at the scene would later find what the report describes as “a realistic-looking replica pistol.”

Brandon McEwan, Nona McEwan’s son, testified in person Tuesday that his mother was much loved and always tried to do at least one good deed a day