Officer cleared by SIU in Kitchener shooting

A Waterloo Regional Police officer was found to have not committed a criminal offence by the Special Investigations Unit after a 2023 shooting in Kitchener.

The shooting incident occurred on Oct. 25, 2023, when police were dispatched to check on the condition of a man sleeping in the driver’s seat of a black Jeep at a townhouse complex at 211 Veronica Dr.

When officers arrived on the scene, they parked their vehicles in front of the Jeep. Police said when they approached the Jeep, they saw a nearly empty bottle of liquor in the front passenger compartment. Police also learned the Jeep was stolen.

Police woke the man up and repeatedly asked him to step outside the vehicle. After several minutes of the officers attempting to get him to leave the vehicle, he started the Jeep and began to drive forward.

One officer, who drew his firearm, was in line with the moving Jeep and sidestepped it. The officer found himself between the police vehicle and the Jeep, and the officer fired his weapon once.

The round went through the front passenger side window and struck the driver’s left forearm.

The man continued to accelerate forward and toward a walking path that led to the housing complex from the parking lot. He travelled along the path and turned left through an opening in a brush area north of the path onto a grass field.

Just past the field was the Dominic Cardillo Trail and the driver turned to travel down the trail. He continued speeding on the trail before losing control of the Jeep and crashing it in an adjacent ditch. The man exited the vehicle and fled on foot but was eventually found and arrested.

Joseph Martino, director of the SIU, said he was satisfied the officer fired his gun believing it to be necessary to protect himself from an apprehension assault, as he was caught in a small space between the cruiser and Jeep and would be crushed if the Jeep turned right.

“Shooting the driver made sense as an act of self-defence as it could prevent that contingency from materializing with the driver’s incapacitation,” Martino stated in the decision.

Martino added he believes gunfire constituted reasonable force because of the officers precarious position between the vehicles.

A version of the event put into evidence was the officer fired the gun at the Jeep from behind as it made its way down the walkway. Martino said the version of events from a number of witnesses falls in line with the original scenario, and was proved by forensic evidence, including the location of the bullet hole, the trajectory of the bullet and the location of the gunshot wound.

The SIU is a civilian law enforcement agency that investigates incidents involving an official where there has been death, serious injury, the discharge of a firearm at a person or an allegation of sexual assault.