The two RCMP officers involved in a fatal shooting on Cold Lake First Nations in 2023 acted reasonably, according to a report released by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team on March 13, 2025.
On February 4, 2023, officers responded to a domestic dispute. Before police arrived on scene, a gunshot had already been fired, and a woman and her two children had fled to a neighbors house for safety.
In an interview with RCMP at the Cold Lake Hospital after the incident, the man’s wife said he had held a riffle under his chin and pushed her in the snow when she tried to take it from him. They both went inside, where they struggled over the gun in the entryway, and it went off into the ceiling. She injured her hand grabbing the barrel.
When officers arrived, the woman told them her husband was armed and intoxicated. She began yelling at him through an open window before being sent back to the neighbors house.
Officers started communicating with the man at 8:02 a.m., urging him to come out. “This initial communications between the man and police were conversational in nature and were aimed at de-escalating the situation,” the report states.
According to a cellphone video provided by a witness, at 8:09 a.m., when police warned they would have to call in the tactical team and canine unit if he did not surrender peacefully, the man made several comments and said, “Got enough firepower here to fight for hours.”
At this time the man pointed a rifle at officers through an open window.
No video captured the man himself, but the report notes, “Cameras reflect a rapid and marked shift in the body language of the officers at this point, who until this time had been adopting relatively casual observational positions from their respective locations.”
Officers ordered him to drop the gun around seven times over approximately 30 second before both officers fired at 8:11 a.m. Another order to drop the gun was given, and a second shot was fired by one officer 25 seconds later. The man then stopped communicating with them.
According to ASIRT, one officer wanted to enter the house to provide medical aid after firing the fatal shot, but officers did not know whether the man “had been incapacitated or if he was simply choosing to not respond to police and still a threat to their safety.”
Officers on the scene did not have the resources or training to safely breach the house, so they waited for the Emergency Response Team.
When the team entered the home approximately four hours after, they found the man dead with a 303-calibre bolt action rifle, which was not loaded. Three other unloaded guns were also found in the house, including a rifle near ammunition in a bedroom with an open window which overlooked the the officer’s positions the report states. “Officers would have had no way of knowing that the rifle the man was pointing was unloaded.”
An autopsy confirmed the man died from a gunshot wound to the chest. Toxicology results showed he had alcohol, cocaine, codeine, and lorazepam in his system.
ASIRT concluded that the officers use of force was “proportionate, necessary, and reasonable,” and that “there are no reasonable grounds to believe that an offence was committed.”
