Shooting Loku only option, officer testifies
‘At this point in time, I’m scared for my life. My life is in jeopardy,’ constable tells coroner’s inquest
The rookie Toronto police officer who was just 11 weeks into the job when he became involved in a fatal police shooting expressed a heartfelt apology to family and friends of Andrew Loku, but said if he was presented with the same scenario today, he wouldn’t do anything differently.
In confident and measured testimony at the coroner’s inquest into Loku’s death Thursday, Const. Haim Queroub described for the first time his involvement in the July 2015 call that ended with Const. Andrew Doyle shooting Loku. At the time, Doyle had been Queroub’s coach officer, a kind of mentoring program for new recruits.
Similar to the account given by Doyle a day earlier, Queroub told jurors there was no option but to shoot Loku as he advanced on the pair with a hammer. Queroub said Loku first raised the hammer to the height of his shoulder, then above his head and did not respond to the officers shouting at him to drop the weapon — a command known as the police challenge.
Const. Haim Queroub offered his ‘deepest apologies’ to friends of family of man killed in confrontation with police
“At this point in time, I’m scared for my life. My life is in jeopardy — and not only my life, but my partner’s life and the public,” Queroub said.
Once Loku was about six to eight feet away, Queroub said he put his finger on the trigger “and had begun to squeeze when I heard the gunshots” from Doyle firing his gun.
Unlike Doyle, who said he could not recall if Loku said anything as he walked toward the officers, Queroub said Loku did talk to them, saying: “Whatcha gonna do, come on, shoot me.”
Under questioning about the officers’ failure to attempt any de-escalation tactics instead of using lethal force, Queroub said it wasn’t possible. The speed at which Loku was advancing did not allow for him or Doyle to change tactics away from issuing the police challenge and move toward offering help or having only one of the officers communicate with Loku.
Anita Szigeti, the lawyer representing the Empowerment Council, an organization both for and run by people with experience in mental-health challenges, asked Queroub if he would do anything differently if the same call came in today.
“I would react the same way, ma’am,” he responded.
When pressed by Szigeti on whether he would attempt to formulate some kind of tentative plan before entering the building, Queroub said: “perhaps.”
Asked whether he wanted to pass along any message to those who knew Loku, Queroub gave his “most sincere and deepest condolences to anyone here in this courtroom that knows Mr. Loku.”
“To the family of Mr. Andrew Loku ... my deepest apologies for the loss, I only wish that that night ended without tragedy,” he said.
Earlier this week, the inquest heard from Jennifer Chambers, executive director of the Empowerment Council. Chambers and members of the group have been working for years with police to develop practices and training for police encounters with people experiencing mental-health-related distress.
She stressed a few times to jurors that strides have been made by police when it comes to encounters with people in crisis, but there is room for improvement.
“I think they would benefit from hearing a lot from people in the (mental health) community,” she said.
Chambers said it is powerful for officers to meet people with mental-health challenges on an average day — not on the “worst day of their life,” as officers often do when called in. But a lack of resources to enable people in the mental-health community to participate in, for example, training at the Toronto Police College, makes that difficult.
Chambers added that there is a dearth of data on how police training on deescalation tactics is actually working.
Echoing a recommendation brought to the Toronto police board by a mentalhealth advisory committee last year, she underscored the need for independent, in-depth statistics on these encounters.
“What we care about is what happens in the street, and we really need an objective data about this,” Chambers told the jury.
The inquest continues Friday. Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca