Police shooting echoes 2016 incident

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/01/2019 (1922 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Chad Williams — the man shot dead in a confrontation with Winnipeg police Friday — was holding a weapon and yelling “just shoot me” while surrounded by officers after a chase in an almost identical situation in 2016.

While details about Williams’ final fatal encounter with police are yet to be known, a provincial court judge was told in 2017 that when Williams was high on methamphetamine or other substances, he was more likely to commit criminal acts.

“Keep using meth and you will be dead — you won’t be back in custody. I guarantee it,” Judge Brent Stewart told Williams during sentencing for the October 2016 incident. (Williams was given an extra 12 months in custody on top of the year he had already served for break and enter and assaulting a police officer with a weapon.)

“Just as an example: the police were really good in terms of only tasering you, because when you come threatening with bars and irons, there has been those ones that actually take their gun out and shoot you. That’s what you were looking for.”

Williams responded: “Yes, I was looking to end my life right there. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life… I don’t want to go back to that drug or alcohol ever again. Drugs are destroying me.”

On Friday night, Williams, 26, was shot dead by police on a snow-covered lawn on Sherbrook Street.

Winnipeg police said the latest incident began at about 7:50 p.m. when officers saw a man acting suspiciously near Sherbrook Street and Sargent Avenue. The man fled, but officers caught up to him in a nearby vacant lot.

“More than one officer” fired when the man pulled out an unspecified weapon, police said.

The officers gave the man medical attention, including CPR, but he died shortly after being rushed to hospital.

Police said they don’t have any indication he was high on any substances at the time.

The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba is investigating, and asking the public for any information it may have. At least one cellphone video taken by an area resident has surfaced on Facebook, showing a man on the ground and officers surrounding him.

Williams’ dad, Jonathan, on both Facebook and during an interview Monday, accused officers of having “murdered my son.”

“My son was not causing any harm — he was walking on a public sidewalk,” he said. “A witness told me my son wasn’t holding anything. He had his arms up and they shot him. Why didn’t they use the Taser?

“They’re supposed to serve and protect, and not serve and murder.”

He said the family has been in discussions with a lawyer to look at taking legal action against city police. (A Gofundme webpage has been established to raise $5,000 for Williams’ funeral and headstone.)

Williams’ sister, Shaina, said on Facebook her brother was trying to better himself while battling addiction.

“He had a goal to change his life around,” she said. “He was a handyman, building house, carpenter… he was a jack-of-all-trades. (He) had a heart of gold he would take his shirt off his back helping.”

In 2017, court was told when police encountered Williams in October 2016, he was holding a metre-long metal bar in one hand, a tire iron in the other, and had two smaller metal bars in his waistband.

Crown attorney Boyd McGill said officers armed with Tasers chased Williams — and used the electro-shock devices on him — but they didn’t appear to faze him. It took several officers to tackle and hold him down while handcuffing him.

Defence counsel John Corona told the court Williams had suffered several tragedies in his life, including having his mother, who had a substance-abuse problem, die in 2008; the family losing their Flora Avenue home and all their possessions in a 2011 fire; and his younger sister dying by suicide in their residence.

A Free Press story at the time of the fire quoted Williams saying after his father ran into the bedroom to wake him and his girlfriend, “I could see flames through the door.”

“I had to get out and get my woman out. I couldn’t follow my dad through the flames and the only way out was through that (upper-storey) window. I landed in the snow, and then told my woman to jump and broke her fall as she landed,” he said.

Corona told the judge the fire caused the family “to lose everything.”

“I think it was the beginning of a spiral for all of them… this is the oldest boy in trouble,” the defence lawyer said. “I see this as a cry for help.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca