Calgary police acted reasonably in fatal shooting of man in 2023: ASIRT

A Calgary police officer was justified in the fatal shooting of a man during a break-in more than two years ago, according to the province’s police watchdog.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), in a decision released Thursday, says the officer acted reasonably when responding to a suspected break and enter at a commercial building in the Franklin industrial area in southeast Calgary on Feb. 14, 2023.

According to ASIRT, officers arrived to the vacant building around 4:20 a.m. after a security guard reported someone broke-in through a ground floor window.

The police watchdog says the man went into a bathroom and responding officers believed he was with another person.

The officers went into the bathroom to confront the man when he struck one of them with a metal spike, tasers were deployed but they didn’t work.

One officer opened fire killing the man.

The man’s mother told investigators her son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and became paranoid that people were trying to hurt him when he wasn’t on his medication.

Before his death, he had told his mother he was takin fentanyl and not his medication.

CityNews spoke to the man’s mother in 2023 who described getting the heartbreaking news that her son had been shot by police.