Katie May
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
kmay@lethbridgeherald.com
A minute and a half.
That’s all the time it took for two Lethbridge police officers to pull up at a westside family home, find 26-year-old Deu Raj Puri drunk on the living room couch, warn him to drop the knife he was holding and, when he didn’t, to fire fatal shots.
The officers had mere seconds to decide what to do when the Bhutanese refugee drew the 17-centimetre blade kitchen knife up over his head and walked toward them. And what they did wasn’t a crime, according to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT).
The independent organization, responsible for investigating cases where police have seriously hurt or killed civilians, found the officers were justified when they fired a total of seven gun shots at Deu Raj, hitting him five times from less than 10 feet away, ultimately killing him.
“I’ve determined that when they discharged their weapons, they were justified in the law in doing so and I have concluded that no criminal charges will flow as a result of their conduct.
http://lethbridgeherald.com/2013/07/news/local-news/shooting-ruled-justified/