Officer who shot suicidal, knife-wielding man in Kitchener is cleared by SIU

A Waterloo Regional Police Service officer has been cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the Special Investigations Unit, after he shot a 19-year-old-man in August, 2021. 

The report, written by the Director of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) Joseph Martino, said the officer acted lawfully through his interaction with the man, who police had been told was suicidal and who came at the officer with a knife. 

According to the SIU report, the man "had decided to end his life on Aug. 18, 2021, by provoking a police officer into shooting him."

The SIU is a third-party police watchdog that investigates the actions of police any time an interaction has led to death, serious injury, sexual assault or firing of a gun at a civilian. 

According to Director Martino's report, the man's grandmother found a suicide note and called police at 6:46 p.m. that night.

His family learned on social media of a plan to end his life by provoking police into fatally shooting him. He planned to purchase a vehicle that day, and drive it without licence plates. Expecting police would stop him for driving without plates, the man planned to threaten officers with a knife, forcing them to shoot him. 

Officers searched for the man and his vehicle, and shortly after 8:00 p.m. a cruiser collided with him on Ottawa Street S., next to the Laurentian Mall. The report says that's when the man began waving a knife at the officer, chasing him around the stopped cars and into the parking lot. 

Footage from security cameras and civilian cell phones show the officer asking the man to stop approaching.

When the man continued to move toward him, the officer took out his gun.

The man was shot in the knee from a distance of three to four meters, says the report. He collapsed, then got up and continued his advance on the officer. The officer fired his gun eight more times, hitting the man twice. Each time the man was shot, he rose again, said the report, and continued to advance on the officer. 

The officer then stumbled and dropped his gun; the man got ahold of it briefly as other officers arrived and the man was taken into custody with three gunshot wounds: both legs and his left arm.

The knife recovered from the scene was a black-handled kitchen knife with a blade of 22 centimetres.

Director Martino said he was satisfied the officer's use of force was reasonable self-defence. 

"The officer had initially attempted to de-escalate the situation. The [officer] walked backwards away from the [man] while telling him to stop, asking him to consider the impact [on his family of what he was doing], and prevailing on him to think of the fact that he – the [officer] – also had a family."