SIU clears WRPS officer who shot man in arm

The province’s police watchdog says it found no reasonable grounds to charge a Waterloo Regional Police Service officer who shot a man in the arm last year.

The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) released its report into the Oct. 25 incident on Tuesday.

It said on the morning of the shooting, officers got a call about a man who was sleeping in the driver’s seat of a parked vehicle in Kitchener.

The black Jeep was backed into a parking space at a Veronica Drive townhouse complex.

Two officers, each in an SUV, responded and positioned their vehicles in front of and beside the Jeep. They then got out and walked toward it.

Inside the vehicle, the officers could see a nearly empty bottle of liquor. They also learned the Jeep had been stolen, the SIU said.

The officers woke up the man and repeatedly told him to step out of the vehicle. He remained inside and at one point lit a cigarette.

After several minutes, he started the Jeep and began to drive forward.

One of the officers, who had drawn his gun at this point, stepped out of the path of the moving vehicle.

But he now found himself caught in a small space between a cruiser and the moving Jeep, the SIU said.

Fearing he might be crushed, the officer fired one shot, which went through the window of the car and hit the man’s left forearm.

The driver continued to accelerate and careened onto a nearby walking path. After speeding along the trail, he eventually lost control, crashed into a ditch, and was arrested.

Police tape blocks off a townhouse complex on Veronica Drive in Kitchener on Oct. 25, 2023. (Chris Thomson/CTV Kitchener)

In explaining his decision not to charge the officer, SIU director Joseph Martino said “shooting the driver made sense as an act of self-defence” as the officer feared he could be crushed by a vehicle.

“With respect to the shooting, I am satisfied that the [officer] fired his gun believing it necessary to protect himself from a reasonably apprehended assault,” Martino said.

The SIU is also investigating a separate police shooting earlier this year that killed a Kitchener man. That investigation remains ongoing.