SASKATOON - Police were forced to fatally shoot a man who came at an officer with a knife that had been strapped to the suspect's hand with black electrical tape, Saskatoon's police chief said Saturday.
Clive Weighill told a news conference that at around 2:55 a.m., police were dispatched to an east-side home with several apartment units in it after a woman called 9-1-1 and hung up.
Dispatchers called the residence on Cumberland Ave. several times, and a crying woman finally answered, but said she was fine.
Weighill said police are routinely dispatched to check on such calls, and when three police officers arrived at the basement apartment, they were confronted by a weeping woman and a man armed with two knives.
The officers drew their weapons, backed up and then tried to slam the door shut on the man.
"He ran at the door from the inside and actually broke it from its frame,'' Weighill said.
"The officers were attempting to hold the door in place from the other side and the male subject was flailing the knives through the open portion of the door towards the officers,'' he said.
The man suddenly stopped pushing on the door and went to another part of the basement suite, Weighill said.
That allowed one of the officers, an acting sergeant, to go back into the suite and grab the crying woman, and they exited the suite to take refuge in a stairwell.
The senior officer didn't see the man coming at him from behind.
"His back was to the basement suite where the male subject was,'' Weighill said.
"He (the suspect) rushed from the suite, still holding both knives, at least one of which we now know was taped to his hands,'' he said.
Seeing that the senior officer was being rushed from behind by the armed suspect, the two constables waiting outside the suite fired off an undetermined number of shots at the suspect, killing him.
Investigators are still trying to pin down just how many shots police fired at the man, and which ones may have killed him, the police chief said.
There had been a history of domestic violence between the suspect and the woman police rescued from the suite and the man had been charged Dec. 3 with assaulting her, the police chief said.
"He had conditions placed on him not to contact her,'' Weighill said.
A warrant was issued for the man's arrest after he failed to appear in court on the charge Dec. 11, he said.
The male suspect's name has not been released.
As is typical in these types of incidents, the RCMP has been asked to oversee the investigation into the man's shooting, Weighill said.
The results of that will be forwarded to provincial corrections, public safety and policing officials, Saskatchewan Justice and the deputy minister of justice.
The Coroner's Office is also investigating and an inquest is automatic when officers are involved in a fatal shooting, Weighill said.
The officers involved had between four and seven years' experience on the force, and they will return to work when they're ready, he said.
A resident in an upstairs apartment said she heard gunshots and thought the noise sounded like her children were wrestling in their bedroom.
But when Jennifer Fiddler looked in their room, her children were still asleep.
She told radio station CKOM that she then opened her front door and heard a woman crying.
"(She) was asking, 'is he dead? Is he dead?' I could hear the cop telling the guy to keep breathing,'' Fiddler said.
"I just stayed up in my room after that,'' she said.
The shooting is sad, both for the suspect's family and for police officers, Weighill said.
"These are very rare incidents, although, right through Western Canada, we are seeing some increase of violence of this nature and domestic violence. That's always a concern to us,'' Weighill said.
On Nov. 13, 2006, Delbert Kenneth Pelletier, 44, of the Muskowekwan reserve was killed in a shootout with RCMP after an eight-hour standoff.
