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A man who seemed to have been bent on destruction is in hospital after being shot by police Tuesday night.
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Police first became aware of the unidentified man at about 5:20 p.m. when a truck driver in the 800 block of Arlington Street made a 911 call saying a man unknown to him was trying to set fire to the fuel tank on his vehicle with a torch lighter. He was not in the vehicle and the attempt was unsuccessful.
The man then armed himself with a knife and a rock and ran into traffic along Notre Dame Avenue, confronting people and yelling, police said at a press conference Wednesday.
Officers arrived on scene at about 5:23 p.m., confronted the armed male and deployed a Taser, which wasn’t effective, police said. He was then shot by police.
He was taken to hospital in unstable condition but since upgraded to stable.
Cst. Dani McKinnon, a Winnipeg Police Service spokeswoman, said it’s too soon to contemplate what charges the man will be facing. She deferred questions about the use-of-force encounter to the Independent Investigative Unit of Manitoba, which investigates serious incidents involving the police.
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In general terms, she said a Taser is used by police in three ways: as a coercion method, where the sight and sound of the electric arc may induce compliance; as a “dry stun,” where the contacts hitting a person’s body may be painful enough to allow them to be taken into custody; and, through an energy arc that temporarily creates “neuromuscular incapacitation.”
“Sometimes the probes just don’t connect. Whether it’s clothing, whether it’s the drive of the person, there’s just a number of different ways. Some people, they don’t feel that pain for whatever reason,” McKinnon said.
“During a use-of-force encounter, if one method is deemed ineffective or inappropriate, and it’s taken up into the next level by the officer to gain compliance, if that doesn’t work, you must consider another option for use of force.”
Notre Dame Avenue from Beverley to Home Street was closed for much of Tuesday evening.
“It’s a very busy interesection to begin with,” McKinnon said of Arlington Street at Notre Dame Avenue. “You have a lot of vehicle traffic, a lot of pedestrian traffic especially now that the weather’s nice, that area is frequented by many, many people and there’s many factors that are concerning about this.”
Kevin.king@kleinmedia.ca
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