The sister of a man who was shot dead by an armed security guard inside an east-end McDonald’s last year says she feels her brother fought the guard because he wanted to end his own life.

“It was his way of ending the pain — he was in a lot of pain prior to this, he was dealing with a lot of demons,” Brenda Hind, sister of Ryan Hind, said in a live interview with CP24 on Thursday. “He saw it as a way to end his own life without killing himself.”

Hind, 40, and another man, 25-year-old Donny Ouimette, were shot dead some time before 3 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 28 by an armed security guard who was picking up food at the restaurant.

A police investigation that involved scrutinizing the surveillance footage eventually cleared the guard, who has never been named publicly, of any wrongdoing.

Brenda recently got the chance to watch surveillance camera footage of the encounter, where she says it appears Hind and Ouimette mounted an unprovoked attack on the guard.

“I feel the security guard was jumped by Ryan and the other man,” Brenda said.

Brenda said her brother was abused as a child, and sought assistance for mental health illness repeatedly over the course of his adult life, to no avail.

He eventually began “self-medicating,” Brenda said, and she says the medications dramatically altered her brother’s personality.

“The man who was in that video was not my brother.”

Brenda said she wrote a letter to the security guard’s lawyer, Craig Penney, expressing sympathy for the difficulty he must have faced after the incident.

“He must be going through some of the same emotions I was going through. I don’t blame him. I blame that he had a gun with him.”

She says that if the guard was not armed, or entered the restaurant with a partner, the incident “would not have happened the way it had.”

Brenda has hired a lawyer to assist her in pressuring the Ontario government for stricter controls and accountability measures regarding armed security guards.

“I would like to see armed security guards monitored the way the police are.”

In Ontario, security guards must be employed in a role protecting cash or jewelry, be in possession of proper federal firearms licenses, and work for a firm approved by the province before they are allowed to carry a gun.