London officers cleared in fatal shooting of man who killed girlfriend

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Two London police officers fatally shot a knife-wielding man after he stabbed his girlfriend and another person and was advancing toward them, Ontario’s police watchdog says.

The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) released a report Friday clearing two London police officers of any wrongdoing in the fatal encounter with Kuhkpaw Moo, 18, on July 16.

Moo had stabbed his girlfriend and another person inside the home on Wellesley Crescent, northwest of Veterans Memorial Parkway and Trafalgar Street, around 11 p.m., the SIU said.

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Officers forced their way into the home and were directed upstairs by a person. Upstairs, with their guns drawn, the officers encountered a man who had been stabbed. He pointed them to a bedroom, where they found a female who had been stabbed and a man holding a blood-covered knife, the SIU said.

Officers told the man to drop the knife but he advanced toward them before one officer fired a single shot and the other fired three shots at the attacker, who was three metres away, the SIU said.

One officer checked on the injured female, who was still breathing, while the other officer disarmed the attacker and put him in handcuffs, the SIU said.

The female – later identified by London police as Breanna Broadfoot, 17 – and the attacker died in hospital.

SIU director Joseph Martino determined both officers used “reasonable defensive force” to protect themselves and others.

“Apprised of information indicating that two persons had been stabbed and the perpetrator . . . was still inside the home, the officers were duty bound to respond to the address to do what they reasonably could to prevent further injury and protect life,” Martino wrote in his report.

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The officers didn’t have the option of retreating from the advancing attacker, Martino said, citing the other people in the home and “the peril of grievous bodily harm or death.”

“What was required in the circumstances was the immediate stopping power of a firearm,” Martino wrote.

Both officers declined to give interviews to the SIU investigators, as is their legal right. One officer provided a copy of their notes, while the other gave a written statement, the SIU said.

Neither police nor the SIU report named the killer.

But court documents identified him as Kuhkpaw Moo, who was under a court order to stay away from Broadfoot after he was charged with assault and assault with choking in an alleged attack on her five months earlier.

The death of Broadfoot, a student at Sir Frederick Banting secondary school who aspired to become a child psychologist, drew calls for more action against femicide, the killing of women and girls because of their gender. Hundreds of people, including London’s police chief and local politicians, attended a vigil, where her brother urged everyone to do more to stop intimate-partner violence.

Moo’s death is the fourth fatal police-involved shooting in London in the past decade. The SIU has cleared all of the officers involved in the past incidents of any wrongdoing.

dcarruthers@postmedia.com

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