Officer who fatally shot Lac-Brome teenager won't be charged

Crown prosecutors have announced they will not press charges against a provincial police officer who shot and killed a Lac-Brome teenager last year.

Riley Fairholm was 17 and struggling with depression when he was fatally shot in July 2018.

Prosecutors concluded that the officer's response constituted a reasonable use of force, given the circumstances.

Quebec's police watchdog investigated the shooting and submitted a report to prosecutors in May.

Quebec's Director of Penal and Criminal Prosecutions (DPCP) divulged some of the findings in a statement on Monday.

It says someone called police after seeing Fairholm, who was armed with a gun, walking down Highway 104 in the early hours of July 25, 2018. Tracy Wing, Fairholm's mother, said he was holding a BB gun.

Six Sûreté du Québec officers showed up at the scene and tried to negotiate with him, but he refused to drop the gun.

Fairholm told the officers he'd been planning his actions for five years and began waving the gun around, eventually pointing it in the direction of the police.

That's when one of the officers fired, killing Fairholm.

The statement says Fairholm was the one who placed the initial call to police.

In August, Quebec's police ethics commission ordered an investigation into the circumstances around Fairholm's death, a process his mother said she hopes will provide clarity about what happened before and after Fairholm was shot.

Low expectations

Wing met with representatives from the BEI and the Crown prosecutor's office on Monday. They gave her information about the investigation and the decision not to press charges before it was made public.

She said she wasn't surprised by the decision because the Crown has not pursued charges against a police officer involved in a civilian death in three years.

"We were keeping our expectations low, just to not be more devastated than we already are."

Wing said she was told the entire intervention, from the time police arrived at the scene to the moment Fairholm was shot, lasted about a minute.

"That was quite shocking to me. I really thought it was like, six minutes, which I already thought was too fast," she said.

Wing said she isn't convinced that the interaction couldn't have played out any other way, but she accepts the decision not to press charges and said the officers followed the law.