SIU clears police in Listowel park suicide

Tori Sutton
Staff Reporter
The Special Investigations Unit has completed their investigation into the death of a 58-year-old Stratford man.

Last week, the SIU announced that OPP officers did not cause or contribute to the death of a man who committed suicide in a Listowel park after a lengthy standoff with police.

On July 26, at about 3:30 p.m., OPP officers, supported by members of the tactical rescue Unit and the emergency response team, responded to a report of a pick-up truck on fire and a man armed with a sawed-off shotgun at Memorial Park in Listowel.

According to an SIU press release, when officers arrived, the man held them at bay and repeatedly threatened to take his own life. After a five-hour standoff during which police negotiators tried unsuccessfully to convince the man to surrender, he sat down under a tree and shot himself in the chest.

“In my view, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that any of the officers involved in this case committed any criminal offence,” said James Cornish, SIU director, in the press release. “When the officers realized that the man was armed, they immediately retreated to a position of relative safety and commenced their efforts to have the man give up the gun and surrender himself peacefully. Trained negotiators and an incident commander negotiated in earnest, but to no avail.”

During the course of the investigation, the SIU interviewed six OPP officers and seven civilian witnesses as well as reviewed 96 minutes of audio tapes of dialogue between police negotiators and the distraught man.

At the time of the incident, there was some confusion as to where the man lived, with some reports indicating he was from Stratford and others saying he was from Atwood.

Last week, SIU spokesperson John Yoannou said the man’s permanent address was in Stratford, but in the weeks leading up to his death, he had been occasionally staying at a residence in Atwood.

The SIU, a civilian law enforcement agency, is called in to investigate cases involving police and civilians that have resulted in serious injury or death.