Ontario’s police watchdog agency has been asked by its Nova Scotia counterpart to review new information uncovered by the investigation into the 2020 shooting in the Maritimes province.
The Nova Scotia Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) confirmed Friday that Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) recently determined that the investigation had revealed new information about two officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who shot at a fire station while searching for a suspect disguised as an officer.
The Nova Scotia team released a statement saying the Ontario agency agreed to conduct another independent review to determine whether the new information would have had any impact on SIRT’s decision in March 2021 to exonerate the agents of wrongdoing.
The federal-provincial investigation revealed that the suspect, who was later shot by other officers, was not at the Onslow, N.S., fire station on April 19, 2020, when the two officers shot a colleague and a civilian who they said resembled the killer.
In its six-page report into the event, the Serious Incident Response Team said the “totality of evidence” led officers to believe this was the killer they had seen at a distance of 88 meters that morning.
The team ruled that the two officers fired their weapons “to prevent further death or serious injury,” saying they had reasonable grounds to believe the person in their rifle sights was the mass murderer .
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