The death of Jeremy Stephens: 1 power outage, 3 officers, 1 fugitive, 9 bullets — and many questions
4 years after police in Summerside, P.E.I., fatally shot a person who had fled from them right into a darkish basement after committing a criminal offense, his household continues to be looking for solutions.
Jeremy Stephens was no angel. He had a protracted legal file by the point of his loss of life at 32, jailed principally for break-ins but in addition for some drug offences and assaults as properly. And his household says he had skilled psychological well being and habit points since he was a boy.
However on the floor of it, there was no motive for the police to comply with him into the basement that night time. There was no different individual being menaced, in keeping with an impartial report on the incident. There was no proof Stephens had a firearm. The household suggests officers might have waited him out, or discovered a non-lethal approach to incapacitate him within the confined house.
Might his loss of life have been prevented? Authorized consultants and members of the family alike assume so. They usually assume a coroner’s inquest might delve into methods of stopping future deaths.
Click on right here for written model of Half 1: The trail that led Jeremy Stephens from a childhood of loving animals and serving to round the home to a darkened basement in Summerside. That is the place he sustained deadly wounds early one morning in Might 2018, throughout a deliberate energy outage affecting the entire metropolis. WARNING: This story accommodates disturbing particulars, and a cellphone video of the basement the place the deadly taking pictures came about.
4 years after Summerside police fatally shot a person who had fled from them right into a darkish basement after committing a criminal offense, his household continues to be looking for solutions.
Click on right here for written model of Half 2: What occurred within the basement, in keeping with a report from Nova Scotia’s Severe Incident Response Workforce (SIRT). It was primarily based on interviews with the cops, search warrants, and third-party data — however not police recordings from the essential time, since they had been reported misplaced within the citywide energy outage. WARNING: This story accommodates disturbing particulars and robust language, in addition to an animated reconstruction of the place the events had been situated because the taking pictures unfolded.
Three cops adopted a person with a historical past of violence throughout confrontations right into a darkened cellar. Right here’s what occurred subsequent.
Click on right here for written model of Half 3: Not ready for a too-distant ambulance to reach, Summerside cops drove the wounded man 3.6 kilometres to Prince County Hospital behind a police automotive. There, medical staff would battle with tools points and a lack of awareness from police as they tried — and failed — to maintain Stephens alive. WARNING: This story accommodates disturbing particulars, and an animated graphic displaying the place Jeremy Stephens was wounded, in keeping with the post-mortem report.
Household describes chaos at Prince County Hospital after Jeremy Stephens was admitted.
Click on right here for written model of Half 4: Inside months, an impartial police watchdog investigation absolved the Summerside police of any wrongdoing. Elsewhere in Canada, if police are concerned in a suspect’s loss of life, a coroner’s inquest would nonetheless be wanted regardless of such findings. Authorized consultants say a SIRT report solutions solely a query about accountability — not preventability.
In most provinces, inquests are obligatory after a police-involved loss of life. That wasn’t the case underneath P.E.I.’s laws after Jeremy Stephens died.
