Alberta's police watchdog has concluded that police officers used "reasonable" force when they shot and killed a man in southeast Edmonton on Dec. 26, 2018.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team report didn't name the man, but the victim's girlfriend, Diane Delorme, confirmed his identity to CTV News Edmonton as 34-year-old Buck Evans.
Edmonton Police Service officers were tracking him that night because he was wanted on warrants and "believed to possess firearms that he would use against police," ASIRT's report says.
"He was in fact armed with an illegal semi-automatic firearm loaded with 30 cartridges," the police watchdog stated in findings released Thursday.
When police attempted to stop the Chevrolet Avalanche that the man was in near 79 Avenue and 71 Street, he refused to get out of the vehicle, ASIRT concluded.
After an EPS officer shot an ARWEN, a less-lethal projectile device, and hit the man, ASIRT said he fired back with an SKS Rifle. Air-1 was overhead and an infrared camera captured the shots from both sides.
"The (affected person) did not exit the vehicle and instead discharged a firearm in the direction of officers. The subject officers responded by discharging their firearms and killing (him)," the report states.
"The subject officers were in a dynamic situation where lives were in danger, and they responded with lethal force. Once the (affected person) discharged his firearm at the officers, the responding uses of force by the subject officers were reasonable."
A total of 31 spent bullet casings were found near six officers who fired their weapons.
An autopsy found the man had 12 gunshot wounds and had used methamphetamine before his death, the report says.
“Buck was a very good friend and a loving [boyfriend]," Delorme told CTV News Edmonton shortly after his death.
"(He) had a witty sense of humor (sic) and an intellectual mind. He so wanted to change his life around, we often spoke about what direction our lives were headed. Although he craved change he would easily fall back to old habits.”
The report also states that an officer in a marked cruiser mistakenly drove by the truck the man was in, which forced EPS to try to arrest him outside of an apartment building, which was not the plan.
ASIRT concluded that error increased the risk to the public. Five bullets hit a nearby apartment building but no one else was hurt.
An EPS spokesperson said Friday that after the incident an operational review led the service to make changes to communication and training procedures regarding "high-risk events" in an effort to prevent the same error from happening again.
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Diego Romero and Nicole Weisberg
