Man struggles with RCMP
The unidentified man was shot and killed in Surrey at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday during a struggle with RCMP outside RCMP offices. The man had been standing outside Surrey RCMP District 5 South Surrey office on 152nd Street and a call to the RCMP office said he was screaming and suicidal, and officers attended.
Officers located the man and engaged in a struggle with him; a woman who lives nearby said she heard the man screaming for help and yelling that he was going to be killed.
In the struggle, the man was shot and killed, reportedly dying on scene. Another witness reports hearing as many as seven shots from two guns. One officer was taken to hospital with non-life threatening gunshot wounds. The Independent Investigation Office of B.C. (IIO) has taken over the investigation of the incident.
“The Surrey RCMP are working with the IIO BC with respect to the fatal police involved shooting,'” Supt. Dave Attfield of the Surrey RCMP said in a press release. “Additional resources have been called in to assist, the scene has been secured and we anticipate that public access to the South Surrey office will be restricted in order to support the on-going investigation.”
Shooting in Surrey
Police have not yet given further details about the man, nor have they made it known how officers came to engage in a struggle with him; it has not been reported if the man had reached for an officer’s gun. Names of the officers involved have not been released.
A police officer being shot with his or her own gun is not uncommon in law enforcement. The FBI released statistics that found of the 616 police officers killed in the line of duty in the U.S. between 1994 and 2003, 52 were shot dead by their own gun after it was taken from them in a struggle.
RCMP have not theorized if they believe the death of this man to be a case of suicide by cop. The IIO asks that anyone with information on the incident call them at 1-855-446-8477.
