SIU clears police officer who shot man 9 times outside Cambridge home

There's "no reasonable grounds" to charge a Waterloo Regional Police Service officer after the officer shot a man nine times outside a Cambridge home in October 2023, the director of the province's Special Investigations Unit says.

On Oct. 15 2023, officers were called to a home on Sunnyhill Road by a woman who said she had been attacked.

Three officers arrived on scene just after midnight and went up to the front door to speak with the woman. Inside, a 34-year-old man was in the kitchen. He saw the officers and picked up a knife, the report says. One of the officers pulled out his firearm and told the man to drop the knife. All three officers backed up into the driveway and the man left the house and got on top of a retaining wall.

"Within moments, with the knife in his right hand, the [man] began to run on the top ledge of the wall towards the officers. He had taken a half-dozen or so steps when he was met with a volley of gunfire," the SIU report says.

There were 10 gunshots in total, nine of which hit the man and one that went into a parked police vehicle.

One officer shot all 10 rounds. The first six rounds resulted in the man falling off the retaining wall. When the man got up in the driveway and started moving toward officers, the same officer shot three rounds at the man.

The man started to get up again when the officer shot his tenth round. The man remained on the ground after that.

The man "suffered multiple gunshot injuries, including wounds to the chest, abdomen, and both legs," the SIU report says.

Joseph Martino, director of the SIU, said in his report that he was "satisfied" that the "officer fired his weapon intending to protect himself, and very possibly his colleagues" from a knife attack.

"I am also satisfied that the evidence falls short of reasonably suggesting the gunfire was unwarranted. On each occasion that the [subject officer] fired – the first two volleys and the final round – the complainant presented in a threatening manner with a knife, a weapon capable of inflicting grievous bodily harm or death, and was within, or approaching, striking distance of the officers," Martino wrote.

It is possible the officer could have backed away from the man and sought cover instead of firing the tenth shot, Martino said, but also acknowledged "the situation was a highly volatile and dynamic one, and there was the risk of the complainant turning the weapon and his hostilities on" other people in the house.