The province’s police watchdog cleared two Toronto Police officers of any wrongdoing in connection with the death of a 55-year-old man who was struck by a TTC bus while leaving Ossington Station last December.
A civilian walking into the subway station on the evening of Dec. 10 “heard a thump” and saw the man on the ground nearby the entrance doors, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) said in Friday’s report.
SIU Director Joseph Martino said the civilian propped the man up against a nearby wall so he could support himself before contacting the TTC’s control centre to request paramedics be contacted.
The two officers walked into the station about 10 minutes later, responding to an unrelated matter. The report notes the civilian directed them to the man, and while the officers tried to speak with him, he was unresponsive.
The man showed police an envelope containing an address nearby Ossington Station, the report says, and while police could smell alcohol they were “not concerned” about his ability to look after himself.
About three to five minutes later, police left the station after learning paramedics were on the way and the man remained where he was.
But about 25 minutes later, Martino says the man “unsteadily” walked out of the station.
As he walked just a short distance away from the station, the report notes the 55-year-old “lost his balance” and fell onto the southbound curb lane on Ossington Avenue, directly in the line of path of public transit where he was pinned under the bus’s front wheel.
The autopsy report’s preliminary findings determined he died from being crushed by the bus.
Martino was reviewing whether or not the two responding officers were criminally negligent in the man’s death, which he says is often reserved for severe cases of neglect that show a “wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety” of others.
“The question is whether there was a want of care on the part of either subject official, sufficiently egregious to attract criminal sanction that caused or contributed to the (man’s) death,” Martino wrote. “In my view, there was not.”
The director questions what would have happened if the two officers took action to “safeguard” the man’s well-being while they waited for paramedics to arrive to the scene, as presumably the man wouldn’t have fallen in front of the bus.
“In retrospect, it would appear that the (man) was not capable of looking after himself. He had fallen entering the station and was largely uncommunicative,” Martino wrote. “That said, it is not clear that the urgency of the situation was apparent to the officers.”
While the deceased was intoxicated, Martino says he was able to stand and communicate with police that he lived closeby. Additionally, the SIU director says the officers knew paramedics were on the way and were under the assumption the civilian who reported the incident would “keep an eye” on the man.
Martino concluded the officers acted within the limits of care prescribed by law and closed the file.
