Craig McDougall was on phone with girlfriend when police shot him, inquest hears
'He just said goodbye to me and I heard the gunshots,' Shanell Parisian testifies at inquest
Craig McDougall was on the phone with his girlfriend when he was shot and killed by police.
Shanell Parisian told the inquest into his death she was in Peguis First Nation when he called her at 5 a.m. on Aug. 2, 2008.
"He just said goodbye to me and I heard the gunshots," said Parisian, weeping.
Parisian, who is now 26, had been in a relationship with McDougall for more than a year when he was killed.
She said he was okay when they first started dating, but then his mother died and he changed.
"He was depressed and hurt and sad," she said. "He drank all the time."
'He was sorry'
Crown counsel David Gray asked Parisian on a scale of one to 10 how intoxicated she thought McDougall was when he called her.
"Nine," she said.
"I asked him what he wanted," she said about the 5 a.m. call. "He said he was sorry for hurting me and for everything he has done."
Parisian told the court they had gotten into a fight a few days before in Peguis and McDougall took off to his dad's Simcoe Street home in Winnipeg.
"He told me the police were looking for him," she recalled. "He said his father was trying to call the police for no reason, so he stabbed him."
Police were called to the Simcoe Street home at 5:09 for a reported stabbing. Previously the inquest heard there was no stabbing.
Parisian said the next thing McDougall told her was "that he wanted to go home to his mom."
"I didn't know what to think. I asked him how," she said, crying. "He said he was going to see the police."
"I heard an officer radio in there was a man down and they needed an ambulance," she said.
She also heard his family yelling in the background and police, including a person she assumed to be a police officer speaking to another officer, saying, "Let's go inside and talk."
Parisian said her mother finally forced her to hang up the phone.
Suicide by cop?
McDougall family lawyer Corey Shefman asked Parisian whether she thought McDougall was trying to take his own life.
Through tears, she testified he said "he'll be watching over me." She told Shefman she had an idea of what he was about to do.
"Maybe hurting himself in some way," she said, adding his voice was shaky as they talked.
Earlier this week, Shefman asked all three officers who were present during the shooting whether they had heard the term "suicide by cop."
All three responded yes, and Shefman did not question them further about it.
Shefman declined an interview with the CBC on the instruction of his clients.
McDougall's Uncle John was scheduled to testify on Thursday but couldn't be found. A second family witness, Nancy Mason, also cannot be located. Both were at the Simcoe Street home during the shooting.
The inquest was delayed in August after Mason and John McDougall changed their statements and had to be re-interviewed, the Crown lawyer has said.
The inquest is expected to hear from a number or neighbours this week and experts on police use of force and Tasers next week.