The death of young Riley Fairholm, shot by police in 2018 in Lac-Brome, could “perhaps” have been avoided, says coroner Géhane Kamel. But several conditions would have had to be met, she says in a report made public on Wednesday.
“Although it was justified for the police to shoot in the face of a threat, I will stick with this idea that if we had communicated better upstream, from the call of 911, if the health and school professionals had established significant bridges, if his parents had not been left alone with their helplessness, perhaps Riley’s life would not have been cut short,” the coroner concluded in her report.
Riley Fairholm, 17, was shot dead by the police, whom he himself had called, but did not identify himself. When they arrived in the middle of the night at the intersection of two streets in the village, the young man in a state of crisis threatened them with an air rifle that looked like a lethal weapon. It took just over a minute after officers arrived on the scene for one of them to pull the trigger.
Like the experts she heard, the coroner concludes in her report that they acted “as taught” at the National Police School. A training that would benefit from being better adapted to people in a state of crisis, according to her, citing the reports of other investigations of the Coroner’s Office in the files of Alain Magloire and Mario Hamel.
Not a suicide by police officer
During the coroner’s inquest, witnesses suggested that Riley Fairholm had used the police to create a situation where he would be fired upon, which in law enforcement jargon is called, of “suicide by police officer”.
However, Coroner Kamel rejected this hypothesis. “I subscribe to the words of Mr. Michael Arruda, who will mention that “the majority of suicidal people are uncertain of wanting to die””, she writes. “The context unfortunately reminds us that the window of opportunity to open a discussion was slim. »
During the intervention, the money responsible for the intervention had invited the young person to calm down by speaking to him from inside his vehicle using a microphone so as not to expose himself to fire. The coroner points out that he could not hear what the young person was saying, which is not “optimal”.
“What if he had shouted ‘help me’ when no one heard him? she asks herself. “He and his colleague could no doubt have been behind their open door and closed window, to engage in a more fluid verbal exchange while remaining in a safe area. »
The coroner is also scouring the school environment and the health network in this case. She holds that Riley Fairholm should have been followed more closely by his family doctor and the other people who intervened with him. “It’s not enough to assess and medicate a person to ensure safe follow-up, you have to talk to each other and build bridges. These bridges have not been built between health professionals any more than with the school environment,” she writes.