Ken Meaney and Linda Nguyen (Canwest News Service) – Friends and family of a native man shot dead by RCMP on a Nova Scotia reserve are struggling to understand how a man they described as a “gentle giant” died in a standoff with police.
Robert Simon said his brother, John Andrew Simon, 44, was a “nice guy,” but he admitted Simon was drunk and angry on Tuesday, the day he died.
Another man said the shooting was odd for the community, which has not seen a violent incident even approaching a shooting in at least a quarter-century.
“It was totally unexpected. He was happy-go-lucky and he really wouldn’t hurt a fly, to tell you the truth,” said Brian Arbuthnot, a senior adviser to the Wagmatcook reserve council on Cape Breton Island.
The shooting of Simon by an RCMP officer ended a 90-minute standoff at the home of Simon’s common-law wife.
RCMP Sgt. Mark Gallagher said the incident began with two officers responding to a domestic dispute around 8:45 p.m.
By the time they arrived, Simon’s wife had fled, and the officers attempted to persuade Simon to leave the home.
It’s not clear what led to the shooting. Police are not saying if Simon was armed, if the shooting took place inside the home or outside, or how many shots were fired.
Witnesses have reported hearing three or four shots, Arbuthnot said.
“That’s all part of the investigation,” Gallagher said.
“We were told firearms were involved. One of our members was confronted with this individual and the member’s firearm was discharged. I can’t get into the details,” Gallagher said.
“The officers were trying to get him to surrender peacefully. The officers were waiting for other officers to arrive, but unfortunately things unfolded too quickly.”
After the shooting, Simon was given first aid and CPR and then taken to hospital in Baddeck, five kilometres away. He was pronounced dead shortly after.
An autopsy will be conducted in Halifax in the next few days, and Arbuthnot said the community would bury Simon, a well-respected commercial fisherman, sometime next week.
“The mood is pretty sombre, pretty sad,” Arbuthnot said. “People are angry. They have a lot of questions,” among them why the incident ended so suddenly and in violence.
“We’re looking for some honest and transparent accountability for what happened here.”
Gallagher said the Halifax Regional Police and the RCMP’s Northeast Nova major crime unit would investigate the shooting.
The officer involved has been moved to administrative duties, he said, but he won’t likely be transferred out of the community, 90 kilometres west of Sydney.
The officer’s name will not be released, but Gallagher said he had a “couple of years or more” of service.
The officers were both carrying Tasers but they were not believed to have been deployed.
A resident of the close-knit community of 630 people, who did not give her name, said people are in shock.
“When it’s a small community, everybody’s affected,” she said. “It’s sad, but that’s the way it is in native communities.”
It was the first fatal shooting by an RCMP officer in Nova Scotia this year. There were 30 RCMP-related shootings nationwide in 2006, the last time statistics were available.
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