North Vancouver RCMP members did nothing wrong in an incident in which a suspect fell from a third-storey apartment window, the Independent Investigations Office has found.
On June 20, police were called to the Treelynn condo complex on Fromme Road near 27th Street in Lynn Valley when a distressed man broke in through a first-floor patio and began knocking on neighbours’ doors.
Eventually a woman on the third floor let him in, at which time he “picked up a knife in the kitchen and claimed that someone had killed his son,” Ronald J. MacDonald, chief civilian director of the office wrote in his report. The woman called 911.
“When officers arrived, they observed [the suspect] climbing out of a third-floor enclosed balcony, through a broken window. Several officers remained outside of the building and civilian witnesses heard officers trying to communicate with [the suspect] and told him to go back inside and not to jump,” the report states.
Other witnesses told investigators they saw the man trying to get onto the roof of the building but he was unable to reach it. He then tried to lower himself to a second-floor balcony.
“(The suspect) was seen hanging from the third-floor balcony before falling to ground level,” the report stated.
The man fractured his leg in the fall. The IIO is automatically tasked to investigate any incident in which a person dies or faces serious harm in a police-involved incident, to determine whether an officer may have committed an offence.
The investigation relied on statements from the injured man, civilian witnesses and officers on the scene, as well as medical records and recordings of the 911 calls and police radio transmissions. The IIO released its report on Friday, concluding the man fe before police had entered the apartment.
“There is no evidence to suggest that [the man] sustained injuries through police actions. [He] is making no allegations towards the officers and states he has no recollection of the evening,” the report concludes. “Accordingly, as chief civilian director of the IIO, I do not consider that any officer may have committed an offence under any enactment and therefore the matter will not be referred to Crown counsel for consideration of charges.”
