Family of Black man killed by Repentigny police files to sue city for $430K in damages
CBC
The family of Jean René Junior Olivier, a 37-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by Repentigny police outside his home in 2021, have filed their intent to sue the city, saying its officers were too quick to use lethal force.
Court documents requesting approval for the lawsuit were filed in nearby Joliette Tuesday morning, two weeks after the Quebec prosecutor's office, the Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales (DPCP), announced it would not be pursuing charges against the officers involved in shooting Olivier.
Lawyers for Olivier's mother, Marie-Mireille Bence, are requesting she be paid nearly $430,000 in damages by the City of Repentigny for the death of her son.
Bence, who was at a news conference announcing the intent to sue, said she has cried every day since police shot Olivier on Aug. 1, 2021 outside their house.
"My son had a steak knife in his hand. One thin man with a steak knife in his hand — and six police offers couldn't try to control him?" she told journalists.
The family and the Red Coalition, a group advocating against state violence on Black people, are also calling for an inquiry by the Quebec coroner's office into Olivier's killing.
"The death of Jean René Junior Olivier is the culmination of a series of racial incidents between [Repentigny police] and the Black community of Repentigny," the Red Coalition said in a news release.
According to the 16-page court document filed by Bence's lawyers, Wilerne Bernard and Marie-Livia Beaugé, Bence called 911 on Aug. 1, 2021, hoping paramedics would take her son to a hospital because he appeared to be experiencing a psychotic episode.
A friend had alerted her to his distress. When she found him inside their home, he was calm but held a small steak knife, muttering to himself that people were coming to kill him.
At no point did he appear aggressive, according to Bence's recounting of the facts, the lawyers wrote. They said the officers were yelling at Bence to put the knife down and that they were putting pressure on him, without calling on his friend to help make him co-operate.
Shortly after police arrived, the lawyers say Olivier dropped his knife but picked it up again in a "visibly nervous and panicked state" after an officer began to approach him.
The officers asked Bence and Olivier's friend to leave the scene and go to the backyard. The mother and friend heard three shots seconds later.
"This intervention of incredible violence was of a short duration," the documents say.
"It is part of a context of a Black person with precarious social status, grappling with mental health issues. It's a question of a very vulnerable person who needed help," said Beaugé at the news conference.
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