Man shot by cop in skywalk released

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This article was published 19/04/2018 (2195 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 26-year-old man released from jail last year planned to return to Newfoundland and live a drug-free life, away from the methamphetamine that drove him to paranoia on the day he was shot by police in a downtown Winnipeg skywalk.

Joshua Pardy was sentenced to 11 months in jail after he pleaded guilty to three counts of assault with a weapon for pointing a homemade spear May 1, 2017 at a trio of police officers, one of whom shot him in the abdomen after he refused to drop the weapon. The sentencing is being reported for the first time by the Free Press.

He was released on time served in December, after he appeared in front of provincial court Judge Mary Kate Harvie.

“You’ve been in custody for a while. Hopefully now, you can transition into a drug-free lifestyle, but you’re going to have to work at it and I’m glad to hear you have some family supports who can help you,” the judge said. The judge heard arguments from Crown and defence lawyers and gave Pardy 11/2 days’ credit for each day he’d already spent behind bars since the shooting. Court heard he intended to head east after being released from jail.

Pardy, who was born in Winnipeg and adopted by a family in Newfoundland, had returned to the Manitoba city in hopes of connecting with his biological family, but his meth use sent him in and out of emergency rooms beginning in November 2016. In March 2017, he called 911 complaining of anxiety and when Winnipeg firefighters arrived, he was violent and aggressive and he tried to assault one of them with a knife. He had a severe meth addiction, according to a psychiatric report filed in court.

The three Winnipeg Police Service officers involved in the shooting were present in court in December, watching as Harvie imposed two years of supervised probation for Pardy.

The officer who shot Pardy wrote in a victim-impact statement he thinks about the incident every day “and will carry the memory and effects of this event for the rest of my life.” It was something, Const. Barry Knudsen wrote, every police officer trains for and no police officer wants to experience.

“The physical and psychological strain placed on me in those moments is extremely difficult to describe. In our training as police officers, we were told it can take days for the body and mind to properly recover from a life-and-death confrontation. I can now personally attest to the truth of those statements,” he wrote.

“I firmly believe that had I not fired, I would have been stabbed by Pardy as he was coming directly at me with a spear. In the space of a second or two, I had to make the decision to defend myself and others, and potentially take a human life, or be stabbed and likely be seriously injured or killed by Pardy.

“As a police officer, I understand the risks associated with my profession, and accept them. However, regardless of what occupation somebody has or what uniform they wear, nobody should be made to fear for their life as I did that day.”

Pardy was high on meth and looking for help when he walked into the skywalk at 266 Graham Ave. As he recovered from the gunshot wound to his abdomen, Pardy told investigators he was paranoid, thought someone was following him and was in withdrawal. He made four 911 calls that day, the last one a silent witness to the police shooting. The open phone line captured Pardy saying “Call the police!” as officers shouted at him roughly 14 times to drop his weapon.

They were inside an optometrist’s office in the skywalk Pardy had backed into after he decided he didn’t trust the police officers. They’d been on their lunch break from the nearby police headquarters building when a security guard approached an officer with Pardy in tow.

Pardy had a pole tucked into his armpit. When he pulled it out, officers saw it was a curtain rod with scissors taped to the end. In a final report on the incident, one that deemed the shooting justified and found no charges would be laid against the officer who shot Pardy, the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba stated the police officers or civilians nearby could have been killed. The homemade spear could have “caused grievous bodily injury” to anyone within a metre of the stick, the report said.

 

If the police officers had been hurt, the prosecution would have asked the judge to sentence Pardy to prison, Crown attorney Dave Mann said at the time.

“This is a situation where he thought people were after him; he seemed to be anxious and delusional and ended up in a situation where he got shot, and certainly, his actions were responsible for it, but I am taking into consideration the full context of what happened with respect to the matter,” he said.

In a report that concluded Pardy couldn’t use a defence of not criminally responsible against the charges, Pardy said what happened that day was entirely because of his drug use.

“All I know is, none of this would have happened if I was sober, if I wasn’t introduced to drugs,” he was quoted as saying in the report.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay

IIU report