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The province’s Special Investigations Unit says there’s no reason to charge Waterloo regional police officers after a suspect tied to Helen Schaller’s death shot himself.
The SIU’s interim director Joseph Martino shared in a report on Wednesday that he’s “unable to find fault with the law enforcement exercise that culminated in the complainant’s self-inflicted death.”
The SIU hasn’t revealed the man’s name but said he was 39 years old.
Waterloo Regional Police Service had previously identified him as a suspect in the shooting death of Cambridge woman Helen Schaller, who died on April 17.
The SIU report explains that on April 27, officers spotted the man at a UPI gas station in Cambridge. It seemed like he tried driving an SUV into some woods behind the station, where it got stuck in mud.
Officers watched him through binoculars and around 11:45 a. m., they decided to move into the wooded area and arrest him.
As they approached, police told the man to stop, put his hands up, and lie down. He dropped what he had and started running. A police dog was let loose, and just as it caught up with him, one gunshot rang out and the man went down.
The man was rushed to Hamilton General Hospital but later died. An autopsy showed he’d shot himself in the head.
Martino said officers were justified searching for and trying to arrest him and handled things “professional and prudent with due regard for public safety in the execution of a reasonable plan toward that end.”
They also “were unable to thwart” what happened at the end.
Waterloo Regional Police Service and Ontario Special Investigation Unit vehicles were visible near Franklin Boulevard and Savage Drive after what the SIU called a “high-risk takedown” on April 27. (Teghan Beaudette/CBC)
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