The Independent Investigations Office announced Friday that it cleared the officer who fired his rifle three times at an axe-wielding man allegedly attempting to break into a house
A Vancouver police officer involved in the shooting last September of an axe-wielding man near West 18th Avenue and Manitoba Street has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Independent Investigations Office of B.C.
The man, whose name was not released, was shot three times by an officer armed with a rifle after he allegedly tried to break into a house in the late afternoon of Sept. 23, 2017. The man, who was in his early 30s, required surgery and survived.
The man was shot after police failed to get him to drop an axe. Before he was shot, police fired five rubber bullets from an Arwen gun at the man, and made an unsuccessful attempt to stop him with a conductive energy weapon, commonly known as a Taser.
“The officers took a measured and scalable approach,” said Chief Civilian Director Ronald MacDonald in a report released Friday. “Considerable restraint was exercised in the use of force. There is no evidence that any officer used excessive or unreasonable force and only when [the officer armed with the rifle] was in imminent risk of serious injury or death by the axe that [the man] was wielding was lethal force employed.”
A total of 13 officers responded to the call and some witnessed the man use a lawn chair in an attempt to break through the back door of a house. When the man saw police, he climbed through a broken window into a garage and emerged with an axe.
A witness recorded 38 seconds of video on a phone, which shows police repeatedly asking the man to drop the axe. Despite being shot with rubber bullets and hit with a Taser, the man continued through a gate onto the street, with the axe raised over his shoulder.
The report said a resident told investigators he saw the man move quickly across the street, “shaking the axe menacingly with two hands.” The witness said the officer who fired his rifle was between 10 to 20 feet away when he pulled the trigger.
The man tried to get up and one officer told investigators that he was yelling “just f—cking kill me.” He repeated the same words when he was inside the ambulance, said the report, noting gunshot residue examined from the man’s shirt concluded one of the shots was taken from between 50 centimetres and 150 centimetres away.
“A man swinging an axe running down the street is clearly a great risk to the public and the police,” MacDonald said. “The officers tried several other options at containment, and retreated as best they could, before [the officer armed with the rifle] was forced to shoot [the man] when he was on the verge of being struck by the axe. This is an example of the police trying the best they could to avoid lethal force, but in the end having no other option.”
