Officer cleared in fatal 2023 shooting of University of Manitoba student

Alberta’s police watchdog has determined that a Winnipeg police officer was justified in the 2023 fatal shooting of a university student experiencing a crisis.

A police officer who fatally shot a University of Manitoba student in the middle of a mental health crisis in 2023 has been cleared of any wrongdoing following an investigation.

Afolabi Opaso, 19, was shot and killed by a member of the Winnipeg Police Service during a well-being check on Dec. 31, 2023.

The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba (IIU) was originally assigned to probe the shooting. However, in January 2024, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) took over after investigators found a Manitoba Justice employee was a close relative of an officer involved in the shooting.

In its final report, ASIRT ruled the officer was defending himself at the time of the incident, saying Opaso ran at them while armed with two knives. They said defences under the Criminal Code of Canada would apply to the officer in the circumstances, saying he was defending himself and other people in the room at the time from an armed person.

“There are therefore no reasonable grounds to believe that (the officer) committed an offence,” Matthew Block, ASIRT’s acting executive director, wrote in the final report.

Details of incident revealed

The report reveals three witnesses of the shooting who were in the apartment with Opaso were interviewed for the report, along with three other police officers. The investigation also included audio from police radio communications, the 911 call and a brief audio recording of the shooting from one of the witnesses.

The report said the officer who fired the shots did not speak with ASIRT or provide his notes or report of the incident.

Police said Opaso was staying in an apartment with friends and appeared to be having a mental health crisis and grabbed two knives, which led to his friends calling 911 in the afternoon on Dec. 31.

When police arrived, they confronted Opaso, with the report saying he was armed with two knives. They told him to drop the knives. The report said one of the officers holstered their gun and was reaching for their taser when Oposo ran at them with the knives raised, prompting their partner to fire three shots.

The autopsy notes one of the bullets hit Opaso in the back, but it is not believed he was fleeing from police.

“A person can turn or duck and expose part of their back while still proceeding forward. A person can also start to fall from one shot and get hit by another shot while falling,” the report reads. “When a police officer fires a reasonable number of shots quickly and hits a person while falling, the shot can be justified because the officer may not know that the threat is ended.

“On the other hand, if there is a long pause before shots that hit a person in the back and the officer should have realized that the threat had ended, those shots may be unjustified.”

According to ASIRT, the incident was recorded by one of the witnesses from his bedroom on a cellphone.

“On the short recording, a male says, ‘drop the knife, drop the knife!’ and then three shots are heard immediately after. Those words and the shots take less than three seconds,” the report reads.

The report believes the shot in the back was due to Opaso’s body position as he ran at the officers or fell from an earlier shot.

Lawyers representing the Opaso family told CTV News said they will be speaking with the family in the coming days and will release a statement or hold a news conference in the next week.