OPP officer who fatally shot Fergus man in crisis 'acted reasonably' and won't face charges: SIU

An Ontario Provincial Police officer who fatally shot a man experiencing a mental health crisis in Fergus last August will not be charged, the Special Investigations Unit says.

On the morning of Aug. 15, police were called to an apartment in Fergus after neighbours reported hearing a person yelling and causing a disturbance. Before they arrived, officers were told that there had been several mental health calls connected to a man living in that apartment, beginning about 10 months before, the SIU report says.

A transcript of the 76 minutes prior to the shooting shows that the man inside the apartment repeatedly asked officers to leave and highlights his increasing distress as they do not, as he said he worries they might kill him. Then, he approached one of the officers with two knives and was shot four times.

The SIU director says his investigation found thatthe officer acted in his own defence, saying hefired at theman to prevent getting stabbed.

"I am also satisfied that the shooting constituted legally authorized force," Joseph Martino said in the report. Neither the officer nor the victim are named in the report.

Two officers first entered the Fergus apartment just after noon that August day and found a 31-year-old man had barricaded the living room entrance. The man was hiding in a closet, the report says.

One of the officers reported seeing the man with two knives. The officers tried to talk to the man, asking him to get out of the closet and said they were there to make sure he was OK.

Although the officers tried repeatedly to get the man to leave the closet, he refused and instead kept asking them to leave. They sent a stream of pepper spray into the confined space, according to the report, but the man didn't move.

The scene captured by the report is one of increasing agitation: the man keeps ask police to go, tells them he has suicidal thoughts and that he thinks the officers might harm him.

But police tell him they cannot leave until they see the man and speak to him.

Officers at the scene called for help from police negotiations and the emergency response team, but were told that only members of the emergency response team a tactical and containment unit were available and on the way.

When the man left the closet at 1:30 p.m., the report said he moved around the bed "in a bent forward position" before he "came at" one of the officers with a knife in each hand.

An officer fired four shots at him at close range, the sounds of which are captured on a body-worn camera and the man fell forward.

Paramedics tried to save his life on the floor of the living room, but he was pronounced dead at 1:47 p.m.

The officer who shot the man had a small cut to his left bicep, the report said.

Martino said there's "little doubt" the officer's actions were appropriate given the threat of the knives.

"Caught in the tight confines of a small bedroom and with nowhere else to go, I accept that the [officer] acted reasonably to defend himself when he met the risk of a potentially deadly knife attack with a resort to lethal force of his own."

The SIU is a civilian law enforcement agency. It investigates cases where a police officer is involved in another person's death or serious injury, the discharge of a firearm at a person or an allegation of sexual assault.