‘Why did this happen?’: B.C. family demands answers 7 months after RCMP shooting of autistic teen

More than seven months after a Surrey teen with autism was shot and killed by RCMP, B.C.’s police watchdog still hasn’t released its findings.

Crystal De Balinhard regularly visits the roadside memorial where her only child died seven months ago.

“It feels like an eternity, yet it also feels like yesterday,” she said of her family’s loss.

Her son, 15-year-old Chase De Balinhard, was shot and killed by RCMP not far from their Surrey, B.C., home in February. The family is still waiting for the province’s police watchdog to complete its investigation into what happened and release its findings.

“Not knowing the circumstances that led up to the shooting is excruciating,” Crystal said.

As the grieving family waits, new surveillance video and witness accounts are raising troubling questions about whether Chase’s death could have been prevented — and how police respond to people with developmental disabilities.

A teen with a pellet gun

Chase left his family’s home in Surrey’s Clayton Heights neighbourhood on Feb. 9. Roughly 20 minutes later, RCMP responded to a call about a person in distress carrying a firearm.

His parents say Chase was carrying an old, unloaded pellet gun that he had taken from their house without their knowledge.

“The pellet gun was up in my office,” Rick De Balinhard, the teen’s father, told CTV News back in February. “I unfortunately had unlocked that drawer to get something else out.”

Chase had both autism and obsessive compulsive disorder, and the family believes he discovered the unlocked drawer as part of his fixation on trying to access areas in his home he wasn’t supposed to.

The De Balinhards suspect Chase — who functioned developmentally closer to a 10-year-old — may have taken the pellet gun outside to record a video. They say he could not fully grasp how others might perceive it as a threat.

Chase did have the mental capacity to go for walks safely on his own, and would frequently venture to a nearby park without incident.

On the day of his death, he ended up many blocks away from his usual route — something that puzzles his parents, who say that likely would have left him feeling lost and disoriented.

They also say he was not wearing his proper prescription glasses, and would not have been able to see objects or people even a short distance away.

According to neighbours, groups of teenagers often used pellet guns in a nearby wooded area.

“All the kids go in the bushes over there and they shoot off the pellet guns,” said John Pedersen, who lives close by. “The cops have been called there a few times.”

Police response ‘felt like a duck hunt’

Witnesses tell CTV News officers followed Chase for several blocks in the lead up to his death. Neighbours Jordan Brown and Shavaun Pellatt had just arrived home when the confrontation spilled into the street outside their townhouse complex.

They recall confusion as word spread that police were pursuing a teen with what looked like a gun.

From their upstairs window, they watched Chase stumble between parked cars as officers closed in. “He actually tripped, fell, got up and then continued on,” Brown said. “Very close behind him there was kind of a line of police officers in pursuit.”

Moments later, they heard two gunshots.

Pellatt says the police approach was frightening to watch: “It was scary — like any kid would have been scared, neurodivergent or not.“

“There was a lot of bravado, a lot of charging,” she added. “Nobody was talking to this kid to de-escalate. From what we saw, there was no de-escalation at all.”

Both witnesses say it was obvious Chase was young and terrified. “Everybody knew it was a teenager,” Pellatt said. “The looky-loos knew, the neighbors knew, people were saying it out loud — that there was a 15- or 16-year-old in distress.”

Brown added that the teen appeared panicked and overwhelmed.

“Overall, I’d say he had a kind of in-shock demeanour,” he said. “He was tripping, falling, flailing his hands — like he didn’t know how to respond to this huge show of force behind him.”

Surveillance footage of the police confrontation appears to show Chase raising the pellet gun to his head while walking away from police. Moments later, officers can be heard shouting, “Put the gun down, man. You don’t want to do this. Drop the gun.”

The teen can then be seen raising the replica weapon toward officers before he walks out of view, behind a bush.

What sounds like two rounds of gunfire ring out and the teen can be seen collapsing to the ground.

The video is less than one minute of what RCMP say was an “extensive” interaction that lasted approximately 40 minutes. Chase’s mother believes officers misinterpreted behaviors linked to autism — such as pacing, repetitive movements, not complying with directions, and avoiding eye contact — as threatening.

“Chase is neurodiverse. He needs you to say something slowly, not aggressively, (then) pause, wait,” she said. “If there’s multiple people yelling at him, or he feels threatened, he’s going to try to regulate his emotions — and we’ve taught him to walk away. That’s what he was doing.”

Pellatt says she was left questioning police tactics. “Why didn’t they try to come from different angles? Why didn’t they Taser him? Why wouldn’t they block the road or get neighbors to safety? It felt like a duck hunt, not a rescue,” she said. “Why do they still shoot to kill? This was a kid.”

Both she and Brown stressed that even if police hadn’t known Chase was autistic, they should have recognized that he was a teenager in crisis.

“Regardless of neurotypical or neurodivergent, if somebody is in distress, they need to be de-escalated,” Pellatt said. “And there wasn’t any of that.”

Community outrage

The shooting has left witnesses shaken. Some question why so many officers rushed at the teenager rather than surrounding him or attempting to subdue him non-lethally.

“You can’t tell me that like 40 or 50 cops can’t handle a little boy. They need more training,” said Pedersen, who added that one of the bullets pierced his home.

He also recalled seeing officers congratulating each other afterward. “The cops are up there fist bumping each other and laughing and joking. It’s like, holy s***, man, you just killed a kid,” said Pedersen.

The IIO told CTV News it couldn’t provide any updates on the investigation, and the RCMP said it is unable to comment until the watchdog’s work is complete.

Use of force: ‘It cannot be excessive’

When it comes to police use of force, former B.C. attorney general and Appeals Court judge Wally Oppal says the law gives officers wide latitude, but also imposes limits.

“The police are entitled to use reasonable force to carry out their duties, but the force cannot be excessive, and it has to be proportionate to the risk that they’re facing,” he said.

Oppal emphasized that de-escalation should always be attempted before force is used. “Force is a last resort, and the force should only be used when other avenues have been foreclosed,” he said. “De-escalation usually means dialogue — to talk to the person who’s in a position to create damage. That’s the duty of the officer.”

When asked whether Chase’s moment of walking away with the gun to his head was a missed opportunity, Oppal was cautious: “It could be, but I don’t know what exactly took place. I would like to know what was in the mind of the officer before that was done.”

He stressed that it wouldn’t be fair to weigh in on Chase’s case until he was able to review all of the circumstances of the confrontation.

Oppal added that lethal force is only justified when an officer has reasonable grounds to believe their life is in danger.

“The circumstances have to be serious. They have to be dire before you use lethal force.”

Training gaps

Oppal, who helped revise the Justice Institute’s police training curriculum in 2019, acknowledged that officers face more challenges than ever when dealing with vulnerable people.

“The police are dealing now with people who are mentally ill, people who are drug addicted, people who are poor,” he said. “We have a multicultural community where we have different backgrounds. The police job is much more difficult because of the many challenges that arise out of some of the issues that I’ve mentioned.”

But he also stressed the need for autism-specific training: “If autism groups haven’t been consulted in updating training, that’s unfortunate. They ought to be.”

Autism advocates say a compliance-based approach — shouting multi-step commands and expecting immediate obedience — does not work for people on the spectrum.

Oppal agreed that there is always room to improve.

“Absolutely, there always is,” he said. “And regrettably, we learn from the mistakes that we make.”

Calls for a coroner’s inquest

Because of the public interest, Oppal believes a coroner’s inquest could help restore trust and identify lessons for the future.

“I would think that a coroner’s inquest would be of assistance so that the situation isn’t repeated again,” he said.

Chase’s mom says that’s exactly what the family wants.

“There’s nothing that can bring my son back, nothing at all,” she said. “But we can learn from this. We can grow if we can teach peace officers how to interact with neurodiverse individuals. That would be amazing.”

CTV News will continue its investigative series on Chase De Balinhard’s death throughout this week, with experts weighing in on the officers’ use of force and what other options may have been available that day. Follow all the coverage here.