Alberta's police watchdog has released its preliminary findings into a fatal officer-involved shooting on Calgary's Deerfoot Trail, one of the city's busiest highways. The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, the independent body that investigates serious incidents involving police, laid out the initial sequence of events while stressing that key questions remain unanswered.
According to the team, the incident unfolded on Sunday after authorities received reports of a dangerous driver. The call set in motion a chain of events that would end with police opening fire, an outcome that automatically triggers an independent review under Alberta's oversight framework for law enforcement.
Investigators say Calgary police used service vehicles to stop an SUV after it was reported for driving erratically near the Deerfoot Meadows shopping centre. Officers then closed the road, an indication of how seriously they were treating the situation and of the effort to contain it away from other traffic and bystanders on the major route.
Once the vehicle was stopped, the encounter became a standoff. The woman behind the wheel indicated that she had a knife, a disclosure that shaped how officers approached the SUV and that raised the stakes of any attempt to remove her from the vehicle. For a period, the situation appeared to hold without further escalation.
About 20 minutes later, the standoff moved into a more forceful phase. Officers broke the window of the SUV and deployed pepper spray in an effort to bring the encounter to an end. The use of the irritant marked an attempt to compel the driver out of the vehicle and resolve the confrontation.
The team says the woman then got out and moved toward the officers. At that point, one officer fired a taser while another fired a rifle. The deployment of two very different tools in close succession, a conducted energy weapon and a firearm, is among the details that the investigation will have to reconcile as it reconstructs the final moments.
The watchdog says the investigation continues into what happened first, and that more information will be released once the review is complete. As the independent agency tasked with examining serious incidents involving police in the province, its findings will ultimately determine how the use of force on Deerfoot Trail is assessed and whether the actions taken that day were justified.