No charges for officer who shot Andrew Loku
Man was holding a hammer when confronted in hall of mental-health apartment building
The Toronto police officer who fatally shot Andrew Loku in his apartment building last July will not face criminal charges, Ontario’s police watchdog announced Friday afternoon.
The unnamed officer, known as the subject officer, did not exceed “the ambit of justifiable force in the circumstances” when he shot the 45-year-old father of five, who was holding a hammer, Special Investigations Unit director Tony Loparco said in a statement.
The units in the complex near Eglinton Ave. W. and Caledonia Ave. are leased by the Canadian Mental Health Association to provide affordable housing and services to people with mental illness.
“Why? Why not? For me, it’s not right to just let it go like that. He had children.” SABINA SANTURLINO CLOSE FRIEND OF ANDREW LOKU ON SIU DECISION
“Why? Why not?” close friend Sabina Santurlino told the Star when informed of Loparco’s decision. “For me, it’s not right to just let it go like that. He had children.”
When asked about the timing of the release of the SIU results — near the end of the business day Friday — agency spokesman Jason Gennaro said the SIU prefers to issue news releases almost immediately after notification of the results is made to the attorney general, the family of the deceased and the chief of police.
“This ensures that correct information is provided to the media and the public,” he said. “When the release is issued is dictated by the process and the amount of time that takes.”
Two police officers with their guns drawn confronted Loku on the third floor hallway of his apartment building on Gilbert Ave. the evening of July 5, 2015, after receiving a 911 call from a person saying that Loku was armed with a hammer and threat- ening to kill the caller’s friend, according to Loparco.
The pair were about eight to nine metres from Loku, and repeatedly ordered him to stop and drop the hammer as he began to walk toward them, Loparco wrote, adding that Loku said to the officers: “What you gonna do, come on, shoot me.”
Loku was shot twice within two to three metres of the subject officer, as Loku had the hammer raised above his head, the statement says. A postmortem confirmed the gunshot wounds to the left chest as the cause of death.
“The subject officer considered disengaging and creating further distance with Mr. Loku, but quickly dismissed the notion given the tight quarters involved,” Loparco wrote.
“The door frame, the narrow hallway, and the stairwell behind them did not give the officers the opportunity to create space or distance. It was only when Mr. Loku had closed the gap between them to about a couple of metres — and it was appar- ent he was not about to stop — that the officer discharged his firearm.”
He said he had “no doubt” the officer feared for his life and that of his partner. Loparco said the officer did participate in an SIU interview and provided a copy of his notes.
Robin Hicks, Loku’s neighbour and the only known civilian witness to the shooting, disputed much of the SIU’s findings when speaking with the Star on Friday.
As Hicks previously told the Star, she had gone to retrieve Loku after she saw him in an apartment across the hall from her own, where he was yelling at the tenants and holding a tiny hammer. She said that Loku, who lived below, had previously complained to her about the noise.
“He just said, ‘Please, please. What did I do wrong to you people? I need sleep,’ ” she told the Star last year.
Her version of events has not been confirmed by authorities.
She repeated to the Star on Friday that she was in the process of bringing Loku back to her apartment when a female officer arrived in the hallway, telling them to freeze.
“I had his hand to the side of his legs, my hands were with his hands. So how the hell can his hands be raised?” she said.
“We turned around, started to walk toward the female officer, and the male cop showed up and he was saying, ‘freeze.’ I just had a bad feeling come over me. I said, ‘Wait, wait a minute’ and then — bang, bang. That was it. Andrew was finished.”
Friends said Loku was a hardworking man who lived alone and was trying to bring his wife and kids, who range in age from early to late teens, to Canada from Sudan. One friend told the Star last year Loku had graduated from George Brown College’s construction program in June.
After years working odd jobs, including a cleaning gig at a nearby grocery store, Loku was hoping a better job would allow him to send more money back home to support his family.
“Officers engage people with men- tal illnesses all the time, but when the person has mental-health issues and black skin, they end up dead more than anyone else,” said Anthony Morgan, staff lawyer at the African Canadian Legal Clinic.
“We’re at a crisis mode, and it has to be meaningfully engaged. We actually have to name it — anti-black racism within policing — and make a strategic framework to address that.” With files from Wendy Gillis