EDMONTON — Alberta's police watchdog has cleared three Mounties who fatally shot a man armed with a pistol that turned out to be a pellet gun.
Strathcona County RCMP officers fired on the 40-year-old Sherwood Park man after he pointed the gun at them on March 4, 2018.
He had called 911 saying he was having hallucinations and that he had stabbed himself in the neck multiple times.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team says the Mounties yelled at the man to drop the weapon, but when he began to advance on them and raised the gun to nearly chest level, they shot him.
Investigators say the officers were dealing with an armed man who was not complying with repeated commands.
ASIRT Executive Director Susan Hughson says the evidence does not provide reasonable grounds, nor even reasonable suspicion, to believe that any of the three officers committed a Criminal Code offence.
"If the person acting unlawfully objectively appears to be pointing a gun and to have the immediate ability to use it, officers are lawfully entitled to respond with lethal force," ASIRT wrote in a release Wednesday.
The name of the man who was killed was not released. (CTV Edmonton)
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 29, 2020.
The Canadian Press