(Sherbrooke) A Sûreté du Québec (SQ) sergeant said Tuesday as part of the coroner’s inquest that he felt threatened when a 17-year-old boy, armed, advanced towards early in the morning of July 25, 2018, in Lac-Brome, in the Eastern Townships.
Updated yesterday at 8:24 p.m.
Sergeant Wallace McGovern testified at the coroner’s inquest into the death of Riley Fairholm, a teenager shot in the head by police in the parking lot of an abandoned restaurant. It was Mr. Fairholm who called 9-1-1.
Sergeant McGovern said on Tuesday he repeatedly asked the teenager, in English, to drop his gun – police later found it was an air pistol.
The sergeant started talking to him through a loudspeaker. He added that he wanted to get out of the car, but his colleague told him to stay inside. He heard Mr. Fairholm say that he had been planning this day for five years.
The police officer said on Tuesday that the teenager was shouting and waving the weapon as he walked erratically towards the half-dozen officers who had responded to the emergency call.
Sergeant McGovern explained that he saw three possible outcomes in this situation: either that the young man drop his weapon, or that he shoot at the police, or that they put an end to the existing threat. The sergeant says he was convinced the threat was real and he’s not sure what he could have done differently in the circumstances.
The police officer said he did not see where the shot came from, but he knew that one of his colleagues had shot Mr. Fairholm.
It all happened very quickly, the interaction lasting just over a minute according to the sergeant.
The police did not practice resuscitation maneuvers on the young man, who had a weak pulse.
Geneviève Racine, another police officer present at the scene, testified that the team did not have adequate first aid equipment and that they had tried to stem the bleeding from the head wound.
The policewoman also recounted her exchanges with the parents of the young man in the hospital. She described them as “tense”, including the one with the mother when she discovered that her son had been killed by the police and that he had not committed suicide.
The shooting was investigated by the Quebec Bureau of Independent Investigations (BEI), following which the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions decided not to lay charges.
Mr Fairholm’s family have criticized the SQ and BEI for their lack of transparency.
Sergeant McGovern offered his condolences to the family. Asked by the investigating lawyer if the outcome would have been different had he been able to talk to the teenager longer, the officer replied that he had no idea.
Several police officers from the SQ must testify in the coming days, at the Sherbrooke courthouse, as part of this investigation chaired by coroner Géhane Kamel.