Officers won’t be charged after an innocent man was unknowingly there shot dead in 2022Alberta’s police watchdog said Wednesday.


The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, or ASIRT, said in a report that three Edmonton officers were chasing a robbery suspect when they fired several shots, including some that hit a downtown apartment building.


The suspect was killed and police later discovered that James Hanna also died when a bullet that passed through his apartment building hit him in the chest as he sat in front of his TV.


BACKGROUND: Sister claims ‘gross negligence’ behind fatal police shooting of Edmonton bystander


In his decision, ASIRT director Michael Ewenson said the man’s death was “extremely unfortunate and tragic” but that officers were defending themselves from impending harm.


“Questions such as whether the death … could have been prevented … are not within the mandate of ASIRT and are issues that would normally be investigated through another external process, such as a fatality inquiry,” he said.


According to the report, police were called to an armed robbery of a liquor store in February 2022, but the suspect had already fled when officers arrived. They found him a short time later armed with a sawed-off shotgun.


While pursuing the man on foot, the officers ordered him to “drop the gun.” After running along a train track, the suspect turned toward the officers and pointed a gun at them, the report said.


It said police fired several rounds at the suspect, who fell to the ground and dropped what turned out to be a BB gun. An autopsy revealed that the man died of multiple gunshot wounds and was shot twelve times.


Bullets also hit the ground-floor wall and window of the nearby apartment building, the report said.


Location where Edmonton police shot and killed a robbery suspect on February 23, 2022. (CityNews)

Ewenson said the officers didn’t know it suspect had a fake weapon and they were justified in their use of force given the “threat of death or serious bodily harm.”


After the shooting, police checked the building for stray bullets.


“EPS officers observed a motionless male slumped in a chair in the ground floor apartment,” Ewenson said. “EPS immediately came in and noticed what appeared to be a single bullet hole in the center of his chest.”


An autopsy revealed that the 59-year-old died in hospital from a single gunshot to the chest. The bullet came from one of two police carbine rifles, the report said.




WATCH: Family of innocent bystanders killed by Edmonton police prepared to file lawsuit




An investigation of the apartment revealed that the shots entered his apartment from multiple locations.


“It is likely that the shell that penetrated the siding lower on the ground between Hanna’s kitchen and living room windows was the one that hit him,” Ewenson said.


He said the death was “extremely tragic” and that officers had no intention of hitting anyone other than the robbery suspect.


Ewenson also said it is possible that a bullet that passed through the robbery suspect’s body is the one that struck the man in the apartment.


“As a result of the foregoing, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the crime of criminal negligence resulting in death has been committed.”


Hanna’s sister, Susan Bandola, previously told The Canadian Press that her brother’s death was “senseless.”


He had been homeless for some time and recently moved into the apartment after becoming the building’s site manager, she said.


“He was just trying to get his life in order and then this happens,” she said.


“If his chair had been somewhere else, he wouldn’t have been hit.”



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