VICTORIA -- Two Mounties on Vancouver Island have been cleared of any wrongdoing in the shooting death of a man inside a mobile home north of Victoria.
Chris Bloomfield, 27, was killed in a confrontation with police in Mill Bay on Nov. 10, 2018.
According to the IIO report released Friday, a woman went to the Shawnigan Lake RCMP detachment that morning to say Bloomfield had drugged her with LSD and physically assaulted her. She told police the man had mental health issues, had been taking drugs and threatened to kill himself.
Officers responded to the home with paramedics staged nearby.
Bloomfield advanced on the responding officers with a knife and was shot with a Taser before police fired six bullets at him, according to the report.
Bloomfield was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead at 2:25 p.m. that day.
An autopsy showed the man was shot twice in the chest, once in the abdomen, and once in each arm.
A toxicology report showed Bloomfield had cannabis, codeine, MDMA, cocaine, ketamine, and PCP in his blood at the time of his death.
The IIO noted its investigation was delayed when officers declined to be interviewed by investigators and declined to hand over notes and duty reports from the incident.
“On August 13, 2020, more than nineteen months after (the man’s) death, the two lawyers (for the officers) forwarded written statements to the IIO on behalf of their clients,” the IIO said.
Investigators said the statements were “generally consistent” with the physical evidence from the scene.
“The law requires positive evidence of justification, which on the particular facts of this case was only available from the (subject officers) as no other persons witnessed the incident,” the IIO said. “As a result, a decision about whether there was justification could only be made after the subject officers’ statements were received.”
