COLD LAKE - The two officers involved in a shooting on Cold Lake First Nations on Feb. 4, 2023 acted reasonably according to a report released by Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) on March 13, 2025.
According to the report, RCMP were responding to a domestic dispute. Before they arrived, a gunshot had already been fired, and a woman and her two children had fled to a neighbour’s home for safety.
In an interview with RCMP at the Cold Lake Hospital after the incident, the deceased’s wife said her husband held a rifle under his own chin and pushed her in the snow when she tried to take it from him. They both went in the house and had a struggle for the gun in the entryway, where it discharged into the ceiling. She injured her hand grabbing the barrel of the gun.
According to the report, when police arrived on the scene, a woman with an injured hand told them her husband was armed and intoxicated and began yelling at him through an open window before being sent back in to the neighbour’s house.
Police began communicating with the man at 8:02 a.m., trying to get him to come out of the house.
“The initial communications between the [man] and police were conversational in nature and were aimed at de-escalating the situation,” reads the report.
According to a cellphone video provided by a civilian witness, at about 8:09 a.m. when police said they would have to call the tactical team and canine unit if he did not surrender peacefully, the man made several profanity laden comments and said, “Got enough firepower here to fight for hours.”
At this point, the man pointed a rifle at them through an open window of the house.
Although the videos available did not capture any footage of the man, 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 yelled for him to drop the gun at least seven times over about 30 seconds before both officers shot almost simultaneously at 8:11 a.m. Officers again ordered him to drop the gun. A second shot was fired by one officer 25 seconds after the first and the man stopped communicating with them.
According to ASIRT, the officer wanted to go inside and give medical assistance after firing the fatal shot, but did not know if 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 scene did not have the resources or training to safely breach the residence, so they waited for the Emergency Response Team.
When the ERT entered the house roughly four hours later, they found the deceased inside with a 303-calibre bolt action rifle, which was not loaded. Three other unloaded guns were also found inside the home, including a rifle found beside ammunition in the bedroom “whose open window overlooked the officer’s positions.”
The report notes “Officers would have had no way of knowing that the rifle the [man] was pointing was unloaded.”
An autopsy and toxicology report confirmed the man died of a gunshot wound to the chest and that he had ingested alcohol, cocaine, codeine, and lorazepam some time before he died.
ASIRT’s conclusion is that the use of force by officers was “proportionate, necessary, and reasonable. As a result, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that an offence was committed.”
