Officer cleared by SIU in backyard shooting death

WEST LINCOLN — A Niagara police officer has been cleared of wrongdoing after a man he approached in the backyard of a West Lincoln home last year killed himself with a shotgun.

The province’s Special Investigations Unit has found there are “no reasonable grounds” to lay criminal charges against the officer after the 45-year-old’s shooting death in October 2015.

Two Niagara officers went to the West Lincoln home early on Oct. 9 after receiving a report of a disturbance, the SIU said in a media release Thursday. After nobody answered the doorbell, one officer went to the back of the home. He found the man about eight metres away behind a post, the SIU says.

When the officer asked what was going on, the man said he didn’t know and shot himself.

Acting director Joseph Martin said, “the officer was lawfully on the property in response to an emergency call,” knew the man had a knife and had threatened to hurt others. But after approaching him cautiously, the officer “barely had enough time to ask a question and receive an answer before the shotgun was discharged.”

“It is apparent to me on this record that there was nothing the subject officer could have done to thwart the man’s fateful final act and, accordingly, no charges will issue against the officer,” Martin said.

The SIU is an arm’s length agency that investigates cases involving police in which there has been death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault.