Ontario’s police watchdog has found no reasonable grounds to charge a pc28police officer after a 44-year-old woman died following a fall from a High Park apartment balcony.
According to , the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) launched an investigation after the woman fell this past January while officers were attempting to arrest her for multiple break-and-enters.
pc28police officers were communicating with her at the time, prompting the watchdog’s involvement.
SIU Director Joseph Martino found that the officer “had no reason to suspect that the woman was in mental health distress or suicidal,” and had “no opportunity to intervene” before the woman climbed over the railing, according to the report.
“Not more than several seconds elapsed from the moment the woman indicated she would jump until she was up and over the balcony railing,” the report stated.
Details of the SIU investigation included police eyewitnesses and video footage that captured part of the incident, according to the report. While the officer being investigated did not agree to an interview with the SIU, he authorized the release of his notes.
According to that description, the incident began around 1:50 a.m. on Jan. 13. Four officers arrived outside the woman’s apartment on High Park Avenue with warrants for her arrest. She answered the door but refused to go with police, then fled to the balcony, scaled over to the adjacent unit and entered it.
As officers waited to obtain a warrant allowing them to enter the home, they learned the tenant of the adjacent apartment also had outstanding warrants. The tenant opened the door after officers warned he, too, would be arrested.
From the balcony of the woman’s apartment, the officer under SIU investigation tried to speak with the woman, who had gone back out onto the balcony of the adjacent apartment. He told her the arrest had to happen immediately when she asked if she could surrender at a later date. She then declared she would jump, climbed the railing and fell.
Police provided aid until paramedics arrived. The woman was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead.
This is the second time in recent years the SIU has investigated a woman’s fatal fall at the same High Park address. In 2020, a woman died after falling 24 storeys in the presence of officers responding to what police described at the time as a “frantic” assault call. Her mother later said it had been a call for mental health assistance for her daughter, who was in distress over a family conflict.
The death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman, prompted widespread public outcry and a large protest in Toronto, coming just two days after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a global movement against systemic racism and police violence.
The SIU also cleared officers in Korchinksi-Paquet’s death, finding no reasonable grounds to believe any members of the pc28police had committed a criminal offence.
The SIU is an independent agency that investigates incidents involving police where there has been a death, serious injury, sexual assault or discharge of a firearm at a person.
With files from Elissa Mendes, Calvi Leon and Wendy Gillis.
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