Crown will not pursue charges after police officer killed in Lac-Simon
Thierry LeRoux, 26, was shot twice in the back while responding to call in the Algonquin community
Quebec Crown prosecutors have announced that they will not lay any charges following a police intervention which left a police officer and a First Nations man dead.
In a news release the Crown said it had reviewed a report prepared by provincial police and concluded that the Lac-Simon police force, which serves an Algonquin community about 500 kilometres northwest of Montreal, did not commit any criminal acts during the incident.
On February 13 two Lac-Simon officers were responding to a call made at 10:20 p.m. which said shots had been fired.
Thierry LeRoux, 26, and his partner arrived at the scene and entered a house.They were told there was a man, Joseph Anthony Raymond-Papatie, in the basement of the home and that he was suicidal but had no gun, it had been taken away from him and left at a neighbour's.
LeRoux walked down the stairs into the basement to speak to Raymond-Papatie and that is when his partner heard two shots. After trying to reach LeRoux over the radio, his partner looked down the stairs and saw him lying flat on his stomach without any sign of life. The partner then left the home to call back up.
An autopsy revealed that the shots stuck LeRoux in the back and were fatal.
Left alone in the home Raymond-Papatie, 22, went on his Facebook page to post that he had just killed a police officer. He then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.
According to investigators, Raymond-Papatie found another gun in the home after his was taken away and told an occupant of the house that if police were called he would shoot them. He also had an elevated blood alcohol level.
LeRoux had been a member of the Lac-Simon aboriginal police force for only six months.
Under Quebec law, any incident involving a police officer in which a firearm is discharged must be investigated by a different police force.
Nearly two months later, another officer of the Lac-Simon police force was involved in a fatal shooting. The results of that investigation have not yet been made public.