How did the SIU reconcile differing accounts of the Loku shooting?

There are the undisputed facts: Andrew Loku was killed by a Toronto police officer on July 5, 2015. He was shot in the third-floor hallway, one floor up from his apartment at 502 Gilbert Ave. He was carrying a hammer at the time he was killed.

But the outrage over the death of Loku, a 45-year-old from South Sudan, has erupted in part because of the contradictory versions of the details around his death. Little information has been released to show how the province’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) navigated differing accounts, to settle on clearing the officers.

The questions point to the need for the release of the SIU director’s report into Loku’s death, critics say.

Until it is released, the public is left with two different accounts of Loku’s final moments.

Few details have been released to show how the SIU, headed by Tony Loparco, cleared officers involved in Loku shooting

Loku’s death according to the Special Investigations Unit

Around midnight on July 5, the watchdog says Toronto Police received a 911 call from someone in a third-floor apartment at 502 Gilbert who stated Loku was armed with a hammer, threatening to kill her friend and refusing to leave the apartment.

Moments later, the unnamed subject officer — the shooter — and a second officer entered the building and confronted Loku. They had their guns drawn and pointed at him. The officers were at the east side of the hallway, just past the stairwell, about eight or nine metres from Loku.

According to the SIU, the officers ordered Loku to stop and drop the hammer and repeated the order multiple times. Loku began to walk in their direction and said: “What you gonna do, come on, shoot me.”

The watchdog says Loku raised the hammer above his head, prompting an officer to shoot twice when Loku was within two to three metres.

SIU director Tony Loparco said the officers gave Loku ample opportunity to drop the hammer. The officer who shot Loku had considered “disengaging and creating further distance” but dismissed that option because of tight quarters, Loparco said.

The force used against Loku was justifiable in the circumstances because he was thwarting “an imminent hammer attack,” Loparco said.

“They had received word of an assault in progress involving a man armed with a hammer threatening a woman with death and refusing to leave her apartment. From that moment, it was a matter of seconds until the shooting, at which time I have no doubt that the subject officer feared for his life and that of his partner,” Loparco wrote in a news release.

The SIU says its account is based on an interview with the shooter, a copy of his duty notes, a forensic scene examination, the results of an autopsy and toxicology tests, the police recordings of a 911call, a partial video of the scene, and the statements of several eyewitnesses. Loku’s death according to witnesses and surveillance video

At the time of the shooting, Robin Hicks lived on the third floor of 502 Gilbert. Just after midnight on July 5, she was awoken by banging coming from down the hall.

She got up, left her apartment and she could see that Loku was at the door of unit 302. The apartment is directly above Loku’s second-floor unit and, in previous weeks, Loku had been complaining to Hicks about noise at all hours from 302, keeping him from sleeping.

Hicks walked down the hall and saw that Loku was holding a hammer and was pleading with the people inside 302 to stop making noise. Hicks said she could hear that one of the women in the unit was calling police.

Reg Lamontagne, Hicks’ friend who was staying at her apartment, had also awoken, and soon followed Hicks down the hallway to unit 302. Lamontagne and Hicks began attempting to calm down Loku, who had the hammer in hand and was banging it against the wall and door.

Lamontagne said Loku was banging the hammer on the door of the apartment to make a point about the noise they were creating — “he was trying to reason with them.” Both say that if Loku had wanted to harm the women inside the apartment, he had the opportunity and didn’t take it.

They say Loku listened when they suggested he leave 302. He brought the hammer down to his side as the trio walked back to Hicks’ unit. “(He was) calm, he was listening, he was paying attention,” said Lamontagne.

Surveillance video shows Hicks and Lamontagne bringing Loku back to Hicks’ unit, according to Steve Lurie, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association Toronto branch, who has seen the video because the building is leased by CMHA. Lurie says the cameras show him slowly walking back to Hicks’ unit, then briefly inside, before Loku and Hicks re-emerge.

According to Lurie, Loku then turns his attention toward 302, and begins walking to where police would have been arriving. He is moving “very, very slowly” with the hammer close to his waist. “The hammer is lowered,” Lurie said.

The surveillance video, which was not properly functioning that night, then cuts out, according to Lurie. The SIU obtained “definitive confirmation” no footage was deleted or altered afterwards, according to the watchdog’s spokesperson.

Because of the malfunction, the video misses the moment when Loku was shot.

Hicks, standing in the hall, said she witnessed the officers’ arrival and the shooting. Hicks, who was standing behind Loku, said she tried to explain to a female officer who arrived first, but soon a male cop came.

Hicks said Loku was not holding the hammer in a threatening manner.

Both officers yelled for Loku to drop the weapon, Hicks said, adding that she was, too. They told him to drop it one final time but he didn’t, “and that’s when the male officer shot,” Hicks said.

She believed it was less than a minute or two from when the police arrived to the shooting.

Lamontagne, who said he was just inside the door of the apartment during the gunfire, believes he heard Loku say, before he was shot, “What, you going to shoot me now?” in a disbelieving manner. He does not believe Loku was egging police on, as the SIU says.