An RCMP officer has been cleared by Alberta’s police watchdog after shooting a man multiple times during an arrest in St. Paul in March. The man, according to a report from the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), had stabbed his girlfriend at a home in the 4700 block of 51 Avenue on March 10. The RCMP were called and officers later found the man in a room holding a knife. ASIRT said body-worn cameras showed the officers told the man multiple times to drop the knife, but he did not. When the man moved toward the doorway holding the knife, one of the officers shot him, ASIRT said; the officer shot again when the man continued to point the knife at officers. The camera footage shows the man fell down after the second shot but did not drop the knife, even after he was then Tased twice. “After the first deployment, the [man] attempted to remove the [wires] with his left hand, while still holding the knife,” ASIRT said. “[An officer] deployed the [Taser] a second time, but it did not seem to affect him, and he kept moving across the mattress toward the door.” ASIRT said the man was Tased a third time, which caused the knife to fly out of his hand. He was arrested and two knives, a hunting knife and a kitchen knife, were found in the room. Both the man and the woman survived their injuries. The officer who shot the man twice was cleared of any wrongdoing, with ASIRT saying the use of force was reasonable and necessary considering the danger the man posed to the officers and other people in the home.
