No charges will be laid against a Wellington OPP officer who fatally shot a 31-year-old Fergus man after responding to a domestic disturbance call on Aug. 15, the province’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has ruled.
“There can be little doubt that the SO (subject officer) acted to preserve himself from a reasonably apprehended assault when he shot the complainant,” SIU director Joseph Martino said in his decision report, released Tuesday morning.
“There are no reasonable grounds to believe that the SO comported himself unlawfully.
“Accordingly, there is no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in this case, and the file is closed.”
Police responded to a Belsyde Avenue apartment at about 11 a.m. on Aug. 15 after receiving a call about a domestic disturbance and possible mental health issues.
A man was screaming and yelling inside a unit and was unresponsive to efforts by the property manager to speak with him, the report details, noting multiple efforts were made by police to communicate with the man.
At one point, the man told police he wanted to kill himself but couldn’t and that he wanted the officer to kill him.
The man subsequently barricaded himself in a closet, along with multiple knives.
At about 1:30 p.m. an officer fired a canister of pepper spray in the closet’s direction in an effort to convince the man to come out unarmed.
Instead, the man exited quickly, with knives in his hands, and headed for an officer. Two officers hit the man with their conductive energy weapons but they appeared to have “no effect in immobilizing him,” the report explains.
At that point the subject officer scurried over a bed to get away and, when the man followed, he fired four point-blank shots.
The man, later identified by his family as Mathias Bunyan, was pronounced dead at the scene.
