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Ontario’s police watchdog finds “no reasonable grounds” to charge officers involved in fatal Burk’s Falls shooting

Joseph Martino, Director of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), has determined there are “no reasonable grounds” to believe two OPP officers committed a criminal offence in connection to an Aug. 2021 fatal shooting.

In his report, he writes that just after 8 PM on Aug. 5, 2021, members of the Almaguin Highlands OPP detachment responded to a disturbance call at a cottage in Burk’s Falls. When two officers arrived, they were confronted by a woman who swung a knife through the open driver’s door window of their cruiser, according to Martino.

“This was followed by the woman advancing towards an officer with the knife,” reads the report. “The woman ignored repeated commands for her to drop the weapon. One officer fired his gun four times at the woman while at the same time the other officer shot his gun three times. The woman was struck four times and fell to the ground. The officers provided CPR while waiting for paramedics to arrive.” 

The 38-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

A report from the SIU says that Martino was “satisfied that the officers acted reasonably when they sought to protect themselves from a potentially lethal attack with a resort to lethal force of their own, leaving no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in this case.”

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