The mother of young Riley Fairholm, who was shot dead by law enforcement in the summer of 2018, told coroner’s hearings on Monday that a police officer at the scene of the tragedy was showing hostility towards her and her son. ex-spouse because they are English-speaking.
It is “sure and certain” that some police officers have “prejudices against Anglophones,” said Ms.me Tracy Lynn Wing in her testimony Monday afternoon at the Sherbrooke courthouse. “We are not anti-police, we have never been anti-police. »
Lac-Brome is a small rural municipality in the Eastern Townships of 1,500 residents with a large English-speaking community. The secondary school that Riley Fairholm attended also has a separate section for young English speakers.
Coroner Géhane Kamel began her investigation on Monday into the death of the 17-year-old boy, shot dead by police on July 25, 2018 at an intersection in his village in the middle of the night. In a state of crisis, he was screaming while holding an air rifle in his hand.
His mother criticizes the police for having fired too quickly on the evening of the tragedy, without taking the time to speak to her son. “I’ve been keeping my son alive for five years and you killed him in five minutes! she said she had launched to one of the police officers concerned the night of the death.
At this time, M.me Little did Wing know that it all happened in an even shorter time frame of 61 seconds.
Discouragement evoked
According to what the young man’s mother and friends said they knew, Riley Fairholm did not suffer from any major mental health problem and did not have a clear diagnosis in this regard.
Riley Fairholm, however, had already been prescribed antidepressants (which he no longer took) and had serious academic difficulties since the 3e secondary. His grades kept dropping and his rambunctious behavior resulted in him being sent home regularly.
He was the group’s clown and loved to make people laugh, said Anders Korean, his best friend at the time. But the weeks leading up to his death had been difficult for him, and he often felt “discouraged” about his future prospects.
His friends had graduated, not him, said the young man. He felt “taken”, he mentioned in English. Despite everything, neither his mother nor his friends attributed him with suicidal tendencies.
The night he died, however, his friend Juliette Blais grew concerned when he sent her a picture of him walking outside with a gun.
The two youngsters, who had quarreled earlier in the day, spent much of the evening making up and texting each other. The then 16-year-old admitted that their relationship oscillated between friendship and love, that the argument was about the future of the relationship and that he was “very disappointed”. They sent messages to each other until the minutes preceding the intervention.
One of the officers’ lawyers later recalled that, during her interrogation two years ago, Juliette Blais had implied that Fairholm wanted to kill himself, but that “someone do it for him”, which is finally happened when the police shot him dead.
But when asked about it on Monday, she said it was more of a thesis people were discussing after his death than an idea stemming from what the young man said.
four years of waiting
It must be said that the witnesses more than once had difficulty remembering certain details on Monday, the events dating back nearly four years. Coroner Kamel also said she regretted these long delays.
“You fell into a crack,” she lamented, addressing the mother. “Several coroners have succeeded [dans le dossier] for all sorts of reasons. »
The work of the coroner must continue in Sherbrooke tomorrow with the testimonies of the six police officers of the Sûreté du Québec who intervened that night. She will subsequently hear from psychologists, a psychiatrist and an expert in the use of force.
Riley Fairholm’s death was investigated by the Office of Independent Investigations, following which no charges were brought against the officers.