Man Shot By Police Committed No Crime: Judge

Man Shot By Police Committed No Crime: Judge

Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 17:16

A northern judge has cleared a man shot by a police officer in Southend last summer of any wrongdoing.

La Ronge Provincial Court judge Felicia Daunt ruled this morning that when Christopher Okemau grabbed a baseball bat on July 5, 2008 and walked toward the four men who had just attacked his wife, he was not posing “a danger to the public peace” — and thus should not have been shot twice, in the space of a half a second, by a local RCMP constable.

Judge Daunt describes Okemau as someone “generally known as a peaceable man” and “not prone to violence”, and says she believes Okemau was not threatening to kill his stepdaughter’s ex-boyfriend or the other three men who were harassing his family — but rather, just trying to get them away from his property.

While the judge acknowledges that, by her own admission, RCMP constable Jasmyn Sawatzky was “under a great deal of stress” the day of the shooting, she says that Cst. Sawatzky “did not know what was happening.”

The judge concludes that it was the other four men who were posing a threat, not Okemau, who was “protecting his family and his property” from further harm.

Judge Daunt further concludes that Okemau is not guilty of possessing a weapon “for a purpose dangerous to the public.”

She adds that if she had found him guilty, she could think of no punishment worse than “the violence he has already suffered,” and she would “have no hesitation in granting him an absolute discharge.”