Police watchdog clears 5 York officers involved in shootout with suspect last year
Ontario's police watchdog said Friday it would not move ahead with any criminal charges for five York Regional Police officers who exchanged gunfire with a man in Vaughan last year, eventually striking the man three times in his right pelvis.
According to Joseph Martino, director of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the man shot at the officers "before any of them had drawn their own weapons, let alone fired them."
In a lengthy report published online, Martino concluded that the officers involved "were faced with an immediate threat to their lives and were entitled to meet that threat with a resort to lethal force of their own."
The incident happened around 12:45 a.m. on Nov. 23, 2020 in a parking lot near Creditstone Road and Highway 7, shared by an event centre and residential buildings.
It began after one of the officers attempted to pull the man over after he allegedly ran a red light on Highway 7. According to the SIU report, the man refused to stop and sped away.
Shortly after, several other officers spotted the same vehicle and watched the man park and get out on foot, the report said. Police began chasing the man — who was carrying a Colt .45 calibre Auto Mark IV handgun — and gunfire was exchanged.
The pursuit then continued through various parts of the sprawling parking lot, and eventually the man was struck by bullets during a second exchange of gunfire with police.
He eventually collapsed and was arrested. According to the SIU, by the time he was arrested the man had emptied the magazine in his handgun. He was later found to have a second, fully-loaded magazine with him, the report said.
Five police were denoted as "subject officers" of the SIU's investigation. Two agreed to be interviewed and provide their notes from the night in question to investigators, while three others refused, which they are legally allowed to do in Ontario.
In total, the five officers fired 20 shots, the report noted. Two of the officers were carrying C8 rifles, while the other three had standard-issue Glock pistols.
The SIU's investigation included the review of dashcam video from several police cruisers, security camera footage from various nearby buildings that captured various parts of the incident and interviews with two civilian witnesses, the report said.
