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RCMP were not at fault after man stabbed himself during arrest in Lumby

Police cleared in incident

RCMP have been cleared after an incident where a Lumby man was seriously injured.

The Independent Investigations Office of BC cleared police of any wrongdoing in the Jan. 3 incident.

According to the IIO published report by Chief Civilian Director Jessica Berglund, the unidentified man suffered a self-inflicted wound while police were trying to arrest him.

Berglund said the man was sitting in his truck and was involved in a standoff with police.

During the standoff, the man called his spouse and said he did not want to go back to jail.

His wife, said that when she asked her husband why he would be going to jail, he told her that it was because his truck was not insured.

“This reason sounded odd to [his wife] and made her think there was more to the situation than that,” the report said.

His wife listened to the police interaction over the open phone line, hearing yelling, and her husband at one point told her that he love her and was sorry.

Prohibited from loitering

The man had been brought to the attention of the RCMP that day by a member of the public, who had called police to report a truck that had been blocking his driveway.

Officers found the registered owner of the truck was bound by a release condition not to "loiter" in a parked vehicle.

The first officer on scene confirmed with a supervisor the suspect could be arrested for a breach of probation, and activated his police vehicle's emergency lights and used his loudhailer to order the man to exit the pickup truck.

The officer told the IIO that the suspect responded by saying he would not go back to jail, and drove the truck about 200 metres down the road, to a dead end.

A second officer arrived, stopped the truck and told IIO investigators that the man's wife informed him that the man had previously attempted suicide and his current behaviour was not unusual for him.

The second officer said he asked the man's wife to stay on the phone with him to keep him calm and get him to comply with police.

Three more officers then arrived. One of those officers said he was familiar with the man from having arrested him on an earlier occasion, and viewed his behaviour as escalating and becoming increasingly violent.

“He said he had observed knives, machetes and loose firearm ammunition in the [man's] vehicle during the earlier arrest,” Berglund said in the report.

Another officer told the IIO he was working in his capacity as a member of the Integrated Crisis Response Team. He told the IIO that he usually works with a mental health nurse, but the nurse was not available that day, so he came by himself, hoping to be able to de-escalate the situation.

Police tried to prevent self-harm

That officer then approached the truck to engage the man who told police he was not going to jail. The officer spoke with the man who said "that he would be dead before he would leave his vehicle."

The man attempted to drive away, but his truck was pushed into a ditch by a police car.

Police told the IIO investigators the man's movements inside the truck appeared "animated" and "frantic.”

Police broke the side window of the truck and used a taser on him in an effort to incapacitate him.

An officer on the scene told the IIO he saw that the man “appeared to have stabbed himself in the abdomen.”

Two officers then reached into the truck and held the man's arms to prevent him from doing more damage to himself, and talked to the man in attempts to calm him.

The officers held the man until the fire department and BC Ambulance Service arrived, who removed the man from the truck and took him to the hospital.

At the hospital, the man's wife said she felt if she had been allowed to speak with him, he would not have harmed himself.

The IIO concluded the RCMP did not play a role in the man's injuries and they were justified in their actions.

The report said it was clear the man would not co-operate with police despite their efforts to deescalate the situation.

“It is unfortunate that the [taser] deployment was not effective in averting the AP's injury, but the evidence indicates that the officers' swift actions prevented the AP from making that self-inflicted injury worse,” Berglund wrote.

“Accordingly, as Chief Civilian Director of the lIO, I do not consider that there are reasonable grounds to believe that an officer may have committed an offence under any enactment and therefore the matter will not be referred to Crown counsel for consideration of charges.”

To read the full report, click here.



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