Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press
The B.C. Crown has taken the rare step of charging a police officer with second-degree murder in the 2012 shooting of a man at a standoff at a suburban New Westminster casino.
Constable Jordan MacWilliams made a court appearance Monday in New Westminster. He has been released on a recognizance of bail with terms and conditions.
At issue is the death of 48-year-old Mehrdad Bayrami of Richmond, B.C.
Early in the morning of Nov. 8, police responded to a 911 call about shots fired in a parking lot near the Starlight Casino and came across Mr. Bayrami, according to a statement on the incident issued days after the shooting by the Independent Investigations Office.
Police tried to negotiate with Mr. Bayrami, and at about 10:45 a.m., an officer-involved shooting occurred. According to the Crown statement issued Monday, Mr. Bayrami was shot on a paved pathway near the casino, but there is no information on how he got there or the circumstances around the shooting,
Mr. Bayrami was wounded and died in hospital on Nov. 18.
Const. MacWilliams had been deployed to the scene as a member of the municipal emergency response team.
Neil MacKenzie, a spokesman for the provincial Criminal Justice Branch, said the Crown has previously charged officers over the use of force while on duty, but that he could not recall a murder charge.
"I can't say that it's never occurred before. But it's not a charge that has occurred frequently – if at all," Mr. MacKenzie said in an interview on Monday.
Rob Gordon, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, said it was an "extremely unusual" situation for B.C. because police shootings are rare, and evidence rarely accumulates in such incidents to justify a prosecution.
The Crown said, in a statement, that the chief civilian director of the Independent Investigations Office, launched in 2012 to conduct criminal investigations into police-related incidents involving death or serious injury, submitted a report to Crown on July 15, 2013, but later that month the Crown asked for more information.
That led to further investigation and two submissions of information were provided to the Crown in July and earlier this month. Mr. MacKenzie declined to discuss the requested information.
As is routine, the investigations office report would not make a recommendation on whether charges should be laid or which charges the Crown might consider.
Delta police said Monday that Const. MacWilliams, who has been an officer for 5 years, has been placed on administrative leave.
Kellie Kilpatrick, a spokesperson for the investigations office, said this is the fourth time that reports by the organization have led to charges against B.C. police officers since the office was launched.
The previous cases involved a non-fatal officer-involved shooting in Cranbrook, a fatal motor-vehicle crash in Salmon Arm and a traffic violation in New Westminister.
Ms. Kilpatrick said it wasn't unusual for the Crown to request additional investigative information because the case was complex.
"In this case, it was a big area. The incident had gone on for a period of time before the affected person was shot. There were numerous police officers involved so it required us to deploy quite heavily in the early days," she said, referring to staff sent to conduct interviews and other aspects of the investigation.
"Whenever you have an incident that takes place in a more public area, you potentially have more witnesses. Any time you have multiple police officers as opposed to one or two, it makes things more complex. You have to determine who is the subject officer and who is the witness officer."
Const. MacWilliams will be back in court on Dec. 18.
Editors' Note: A Tuesday news story on a police officer charged in a fatal shooting incorrectly said the incident occurred at suburban Delta casino. In fact, the incident happened at a New Westminster casino. This version has been corrected.
Ian Bailey