‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I lost my brother’
Andrew Loku’s family members attend inquest to learn about his final moments in July 2015
Tears come to Rose Mono’s eyes when she remembers her long-distance conversations with her younger brother. He’d call her just to chat, or sing carols over the phone at Christmas.
Remembering the last time she saw Andrew Loku alive, when he took a trip to visit her in Saskatoon in 2012, she breaks down.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. “I lost my brother.”
Mono and her son, Mono Alam, flew to Toronto from Saskatchewan this week to attend the ongoing coroner’s inquest into Loku’s death. It was important to the family to learn about his final moments, though it has been difficult to sit and listen, Alam said.
“He was just a happy person who just got pushed too far and couldn’t handle it any more,” said Alam, noting he knew little about his uncle’s mental-health challenges.
Loku, 45, was killed by a Toronto police officer in July 2015 after he advanced on two officers while holding a hammer. Police had been summoned to Loku’s apartment building by a 911 call reporting he was threatening to kill another resident.
The inquest has heard Loku struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after being tortured in what’s now South Sudan. At the time of his death, he had three times the legal driving limit of alcohol in his bloodstream.
Loku had been hoping to bring his wife and five children, aged12 to 20, to Canada from Uganda, where the kids were all attending school.
“Once this happened, it shut down everything. Their world ended.” MONO ALAM ANDREW LOKU’S NEPHEW
Mono and Alam said they are worried about Loku’s children, some of whom are now living in a camp in Juba, South Sudan.
“Once this happened, it shut down everything. Their world ended,” Alam said. “Their only hope was to come here.”
Asked what the family wants to gain from the inquest, Alam said they are hoping for an apology and learn the name of the officer who killed Loku.
“We’ve been hearing more about the mental issues than who shot him,” Alam said.
The officers involved in the shooting, Toronto Consts. Andrew Doyle and Haim Queroub, are expected to testify this week.
Taking the witness stand Tuesday was Insp. Peter Moreira, a senior Toronto police officer who responded immediately after Loku’s shooting to help arrange scene management while the SIU investigators were en route.
Moreira told the jury that, in consultation with an SIU liaison officer, it was decided that he would take on the “critical” task of ensuring any pertinent video evidence was collected — “my experience with video is that it is short-lived,” said Moreira, who has been an investigator for much of his 26-year career.
He and another police officer spoke with the building superintendent and attempted to gain access to the video, first in the superintendent’s own unit, then in the basement of the building, but met with some difficulties including that the superintendent no longer had the correct password.
Moreira ultimately instructed the other officer to stay on scene with the express purpose of ensuring the preservation of the video evidence.
This attempt to access and download video was called “improper” by SIU director Tony Loparco in his di- rector’s report on Loku’s death — a criticism later made public when a redacted version of the report was released.
In his report, Loparco said that except in situations of overriding public safety concern, police should never attempt to view or download video without first getting consent of the SIU, adding that the case was an example of post-incident conduct that could “publicly compromise the credibility of the SIU’s investigation.”
But Moreira — who was not ap- proached by the SIU to explain his actions that night — said he believed it was his duty to preserve the scene.
“Everything I did was above board. There was no intent in my part to do anything malicious,” he said. “I think I did what was right.” Under questioning by Howard Morton, lawyer for Across Boundaries and a former director of the SIU, Moreira was asked for his understanding of Police Services Act regulations laying out the expectations of police when it’s clear the SIU will be called in to investigate.
Under those regulations, the affected police service must secure the scene, while the SIU is the lead investigator.
Morton pressed Moreira on the definition of securing the scene, suggesting that officers should have simply been stationed in key places to ensure no one touched any possible evidence.
Moreira disagreed, saying he would be “neglectful” of his duties “if I didn’t take every step to identify every possible piece of evidence.” Police would similarly be criticized if officers did nothing to preserve evidence and then it was lost before SIU investigators could arrive on scene.
“I’m comfortable with the decisions I made that night,” Moreira said.
“The actions I took that night I would consider taking again.” Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca