"I still, after five years, do not understand this. And I don't understand why there hasn't been some sort of justice brought upon this," said Danny Antonucci, an animator who worked side-by-side with Paul Boyd until the day Boyd was killed.
"That video is absolutely heart-breaking. It's heart-breaking. To see Paul crawling on his hands and knees and to have some ignorant person shoot a gun into his head, I mean, it's just insane.
"And I'm in the business where I'm supposed to be making people laugh all day long."
In the new video, shot by a tourist from Winnipeg, Boyd is shown crawling across a Vancouver street before a police officer shoots him.
Police had been called to the busy intersection in August 2007 after a 911 call and were confronted by Boyd, who witnesses said was swinging a bike chain.
Boyd had bipolar disorder and had not taken his medication that day.
Const. Lee Chipperfield testified at a coroner's inquest that he believed Boyd was still armed when he fired the fatal shot to Boyd's head.
But the new video, released to the media this week, appears to show Boyd was no longer holding the bike chain when he was killed.
Instead, it shows a police officer next to Boyd bending down and picking up the chain before the final, deadly, shot was fired.
Boyd's father, David, said the video was almost exactly how he visualized the last moments of his son's life after he heard the testimony at the coroner's inquest.
But he said some details were very disturbing.
"I imagined Paul crawling, I didn't imagine that he would have so much vitality left that he seemed to be crawling fairly rapidly," he said in an interview. "But the fact he was crawling was disturbing, that they would still be feeling that a man crawling towards them was a threat."
Three police officers told the inquest they still felt threatened by Boyd after he was shot and crawling towards the cops.
Antonucci said in the years since his friend died, he's lost all faith in the justice system and said Boyd's case — and the emergence of a key bystander video — reminds him of the death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver's airport.
In that case, RCMP maintained they shot an armed, delirious man before a witness video showed Dziekanski wielded only a stapler and was zapped by a police Taser within seconds of officers arriving on the scene.
"With all the situations that have happened, the fellow at the airport, of police deaths of people dying within the police realms," said Antonucci. "It's just a really scary scenario."
The Crown ruled out charges against the officer in Boyd's case and the B.C. Police Complaint Commission found too many conflicting versions to proceed with disciplinary action against Chipperfield.
But the new video prompted Attorney General Shirley Bond to have the case sent to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, an independent agency that handles cases of serious injury or death involving Alberta officers.
The police complaints commissioner, Stan Lowe, said he saw the video and agreed to reopening the investigation.
Clifton Purvis, the director of the Alberta team, said his entire Calgary team of nine members is working on the investigation.
He agreed the video had the potential to shore up witness accounts and discount others.
"At first blush, it sounds fairly simple — you just consider the video tape — but you really have to look at the initial investigation and try and determine what impact the video would have had on the investigation had it been available back then."
He said the investigation will likely take months.
Antonucci said he has never believed his friend's death was properly probed and said he is glad there is another effort to get answers.
He noted he and his co-workers knew of Boyd's condition and knew how to handle him if he hadn't taken his medication.
"Why couldn't the police?"
Original Article
Source: huffington post
Author: CP
No comments:
Post a Comment