No charges for Vancouver police officer who shot suspect and deceased victim

No charges will be laid against a Vancouver police officer who fired his weapon three times, hitting a suspect and the body of woman who was already dead.

The British Columbia Criminal Justice Branch says it considered several possible charges against the officer, including careless use of a firearm, assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm.

The justice branch says in a news release that in April 2014, two officers came upon the suspect in the blood-covered hallway of a Vancouver apartment building with a woman and child lying motionless at his feet.

Police told the man to put down his weapon and when he refused, an officer fired, shooting the suspect in the hand and hitting the woman, who had already been stabbed to death, with another bullet.

The Independent Investigations office looked into the shooting and passed its report on to the justice branch, which says its charge standard for proceeding with a prosecution has not been met.

Shortly after the confrontation, a man was charged with the second-degree murder of his mother and the attempted murder of his 19-month old niece.

The justice branch says he was found not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder.

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IIO investigation took almost 2 years

The IIO investigation results were delivered to the Crown on March 31, 2016 — almost two years after the initial investigation.

IIO spokesperson Martin Youssef said the office's timeliness is "not something we're proud of."

He said the office has suffered from internal problems, it relies on third-party reports that often aren't timely, and it doesn't have access to its own labs for ballistics and other testing.

"We're having a serious look at our internal processes and improving those," Youssef said.

"We're working with the third-party labs, the external labs that we rely on to expedite the reports. And, of course, we are working with the police agencies across the province to ensure more cooperation and ongoing cooperation with our cases."

He said delays are also sometimes caused by unpredictable spikes in incidents requiring investigation.

Youssef did not say whether timeliness is improving at the IIO but said new staff are being hired and timeliness requires "long-term solutions" and the number of cases the office gets are impossible to predict.