In an incidence laden with high drama and tension, an officer of Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has been exonerated. The charges that implicated the officer in a criminal act leading to the injury of a 21-year-old male have been dismissed due to lack of evidence. The young man had purportedly seized a firearm from a police vehicle in Lakeshore during the peak of summer.
The SIU report sheds light on the sequence of events from the 3rd of July, when law enforcement was alerted to a car crash on Notre Dame Street, Belle River. The driver reportedly abandoned the vehicle while it was still in motion, resulting in it smashing into a building.
Shortly after, several reports flooded the emergency lines about a man unlawfully encroaching onto several properties to the west of West Belle River Road, brandishing what seemed to be a rifle.
According to the SIU analysis, an officer discovered the man hiding in a garage on Diesbourg Boulevard. When confronted with a C8 rifle, the suspect fled, only to reverse direction and advance menacingly towards the officer. When the officer retreated to her patrol car, the man is reported to have lunged at her through an open window.
Despite such a confrontational situation, the man managed to seize the officer’s firearm and make good his escape. However, he soon discarded the weapon only to invade a knife which he used to inflict wounds on his own back and the left side of his torso.
In an unpredictable turn of events, the man ended up in the Belle River, where other on-scene officers found him. The officers urged him to return to the shore, aiding his efforts by casting him a flotation device. Upon his shore landing, officers administered first aid and transported him to the hospital for treatment of neck and abdominal injuries.
Joseph Martino, the SIU director, deemed there to be “no reasonable grounds” to insinuate the officer might have violated the law in relation to the injuries sustained by the man.
