# Mounties Shoot Man Armed With Shotgun



## Inspector (Nov 13, 2006)

VEGREVILLE, Alta. -- RCMP officers shot and killed a 59-year-old man who refused to stop pointing his shotgun at police Saturday evening after a high-speed chase.
The pursuit roared down Vegreville's main street, Highway 16A, and ended in the downtown post office's parking lot at about 7 p.m. Saturday. The man got out and pointed a loaded shotgun at the officers.
"He was waving it around, and the cops were waving their guns at him and yelling at him to put the weapon down and everything," said Rob Kozicki, who was driving along 16A as the shooting occurred.







*Investigators examine a firearm at the scene of a shooting involving the RCMP in Vegreville. This incident was the conclusion of an apparent high speed chase.*

*Shaughn Butts/CNS*



"They were yelling and screaming. I guess he pointed it at the cops, and the cops fired three times and hit him three times in the chest and then ran up and kicked the gun away."
Kozicki then drove around the corner and returned to see paramedics doing CPR on the man to revive him.
"But by the looks of it, they couldn't."
Isaac Friesen, who lives beside the parking lot, said he was just returning from grocery shopping when he saw the man being placed in an ambulance with a cover over him.
"He wasn't moving," he said. "He was laying all quiet and it looked like his arms were all white."
Vegreville is 100 kilometres east of Edmonton along the Yellowhead highway.
Police did not name the deceased man Saturday night, saying they still had to update next of kin.
The officers involved in the shooting were from the Vegreville RCMP detachment, less than a block away from the parking lot. Const. Laurel Kading, an RCMP spokeswoman, declined to name them or say how long they had served with the police.
"The individual failed to comply with RCMP demands to put the firearm down," Kading confirmed.
The man was not known to police, she said.
She said support has been brought in for the small detachment.
The medical examiner was on the scene Saturday evening, as were five members of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, which is called in to investigate police conduct.
This was exactly the type of incident that group was created last year to probe, said Christine Skjerven of the province's Solicitor General ministry.
From a church and shelter, about half a block away, Wes Stefanec said he could hear the man talking to police but that he couldn't make out the words.
"He sounded angry," Stefanec said.
"He was definitely agitated. You could tell his movements weren't that of someone who was normal. Maybe he was intoxicated or high or something but the way he was moving didn't seem like he was in balance," he said.
Vegreville resident Matthew Throness said he heard three shots while eating supper with his family.
"My kids called and there was a man lying on the ground with a police officer standing over him with a gun pointed at the man," he told Global Television.
"You could have heard it from blocks away," said Michelle Clemens, another eyewitness. 
At least one of the officers was wearing a bulletproof vest, she said.
A pile of medical debris and the man's blue shirt that paramedics had to cut off still lay in the parking lot beside a dumpster behind the post office.


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