Officer who shot man carrying BB gun on Calgary train used reasonable force: ASIRT

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This article was published 13/02/2025 (268 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CALGARY – Alberta’s police watchdog says an officer was justified in shooting a man who boarded a light-rail-transit train in Calgary with a weapon that turned out to be a BB gun.

Police were called in July 2021 after a report a homeless man got on the C-Train and sat down with a handgun on his lap before falling asleep.

In a report released Thursday, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, or ASIRT, said the man woke up hours later and walked along the train platform with the gun in his hand.

The watchdog said the man ignored officers’ demands to drop the gun and was shot in the head and chest, sustaining serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

ASIRT said the weapon was later found to be a BB gun, as the man had planned to shoot it at a BB gun course.

“It is my opinion that (the officer) was lawfully placed and acting properly in the execution of his duties,” said ASIRT executive director Michael Ewenson in the report.

The report said the man sat by himself and passed out on the train. After all the other passengers got off the train, police used a megaphone to try waking the man, to no avail.

Several hours later, ASIRT said the man woke up, gathered his belongings and got off the train. He walked along the platform with the gun in his hand. Officers demanded he drop the weapon, but did not comply.

“(An officer) discharged his firearm, striking the (man) in the head and chest,” Ewenson said.

The man, after several weeks in hospital, later told ASIRT investigators that he smoked “half of an eight ball of heroin” — the equivalent of a sugar packet — before boarding. ASIRT said the BB gun didn’t work, but he planned to use it at a shooting range at Siksika Nation, a large First Nation east of Calgary.

No one on the train said anything about the gun to the man, ASIRT said.

“It was not normal for him to carry the BB gun on his lap. He forgot it there and had planned on putting it in his bag but was too tired,” Ewenson said.

When he came to, the man told ASIRT that he thought it best to go to his friend’s place, but was stopped by police telling him to get on the ground. He couldn’t see the officers and couldn’t find where their voices were coming from.

He blacked out but woke up again, looking at an officer, who then shot him in the head and lower left abdomen. The man told ASIRT he didn’t recall what he was doing before being shot.

ASIRT said he gestured to officers in an “aggressive, challenging” manner. Video footage suggests he pulled the gun from his waistband, holding it by its barrel.

Ewenson said the man posed a lethal threat to officers, who exercised “reasonably necessary” force to bring him under control.

“As a result, there are no grounds to believe that an offence was committed,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2025.

— By Aaron Sousa in Edmonton.