An inquest has been called into the April 2020 death of God's Lake First Nation member Stewart Andrews, 22, who was fatally shot by a Winnipeg police officer.
Manitoba chief medical examiner John K. Younes called the inquest under the Fatality Inquiries Act because it resulted from the use of force by a police officer in the course of duty.
The shooting was previously investigated by the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba (IIU), which released a report Dec. 2 saying that no charges were being recommended against the officer who shot Andrews.
Andrews, 22, was shot five times and killed April 18, 2020 by a Winnipeg Police Service officer responding to a call about a man who said he was confronted and assaulted by two men who tried to rob him when he was taking out his garbage around 4 a.m. A 16-year-old male who was arrested at the same time received minor injuries and was charged with multiple offences including robbery and using an imitation weapon while committing an indictable offence, among others.
The officer said in a statement to the IIU, which looks into all serious incidents involving on- and off-duty police officers in Manitoba, that Andrews was aggressively swinging a metal pipe and coming toward him and a police dog handler when he was shot and that he felt himself and the other officer were in danger of serious injury if Andrews weren’t subdued.
In a press conference following the release of the IIU report on the shooting, Northern Manitoba Indigenous leaders said the report raised troubling questions.
The dog handler told the IIU that he did not deploy his dog because he was fearful that Andrews would kill it, a statement that shocked Garrison Settee, grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO), a political advocacy organization that represents 26 Northern Manitoba First Nations, including God’s Lake First Nation, where Andrews was originally from.
Settee said it seemed as if officers believed the police dog’s life was more valuable than the life of an Indigenous man.
God’s Lake First Nation Chief Hubert Watt said Dec. 2 that Andrews, who was a father of one child and helping to raise two other children with his girlfriend, was a high school graduate with “high hopes, high ambitions.”
“There were other ways to deal with him,” Watt said.
