A man shot to death by police in a north Toronto hotel parking lot called 911 on himself and then advanced on officers while brandishing a knife before he was killed, the province’s police watchdog found.
The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) says that just after midnight on April 30, 2020, a man in his 30s pulled his BMW sedan into the parking lot of the Best Western Hotel on Norfinch Drive, just steps away from Toronto police 31 Division.
The SIU says the man then dialed 911.
He told the dispatcher there was a white man in a black BMW brandishing a handgun and a knife.
As the dispatcher pressed for more details, the caller hung up.
“No in their car, just saw, I got to go,” he said, declining to provide his name according to a transcript of the call included in the SIU director Joseph Martino official report of the incident.
At 12:19 a.m., an officer agreed to head to the area.
When police arrived, the man got out of the BMW, holding a knife.
“The officer yelled at the Complainant to drop the knife,” SIU investigators wrote. “The Complainant continued his advance, knife in hand, and was shot by the (subject officer) when he neared to within about a metre of the officer on the driver’s side of the cruiser.”
Approximately one minute later, the officer told dispatchers he had shot a man.
“Shots fired, shots fired subject down,” he said.
“Are you conscious, can you hear me, put the knife down,” an officer was heard saying.
After officers and paramedics attempted CPR on the man, he later was pronounced dead at the scene.
The SIU obtained notes of the incident from five officers who witnessed or were otherwise involved in the incident, but the subject officer who pulled the trigger declined to be interviewed or hand over his notes.
A sweep of surveillance camera footage from the parking lot of the hotel showed that two police cruisers were in the parking lot up until about four minutes before the deceased man called 911.
Investigators collected a 15 centimetre long knife and a Glock 22 handgun belonging to police from the incident scene.
DNA analysis of the knife “produced DNA from at least two people, including at least one male.”
Cross-reference with the deceased man’s DNA found that while he could not definitively be linked to the blade, he “cannot be excluded” as having contact with it.
Martino said that in the circumstances, the subject officer had no choice but to fire.
“The (subject officer) backtracked an extent and then fired his weapon three times when the Complainant neared to within about a metre,” Martino wrote. “At that distance, the officer had every reason to believe that his life was in imminent peril and that shooting the Complainant was necessary if he was going to protect himself from a knife attack.”
He said the deceased man suffered from mental health issues but why he called 911 that night will never be known.
“There was evidence gathered in the investigation that the Complainant suffered from mental illness suggesting, possibly, that he was of unsound mind at the time. Be that as it may, the (subject officer) would have had no knowledge of mental illness being a factor at play as he made his way to the scene and confronted the Complainant.”
