Inquest hears that man killed by Saskatoon police in 2022 challenged cops to shoot him

Two members of Saskatoon police's guns and gangs unit say Ronnie Glen Herman exhorted them to shoot him, moments before holding a gun to his own head and going into a house on Avenue E North.

The officers testified Monday at Court of King's Bench during a coroner's inquest into the Oct. 27, 2022, fatal shooting of the 36-year-old from La Loche, Sask.

Const. Jay Keating and Sgt. Kevin Adrian said they had tracked Herman to a house at 1344 Avenue E North. There were warrants for Herman's arrest because he was supposed to be under house arrest in La Loche. Instead, he was armed and on the loose in Saskatoon.

Keating testified that after watching the house, they spotted Herman with a bike in the alley and bracketed him with their SUVs. When they turned on their emergency lights, Herman did not hesitate, Keating said.

"Herman pulled a black handgun from his pants and I yelled, 'gun, gun, gun,'" Keating testified.

"He dropped the bike and started yelling for us to shoot him. Then he held the gun to his own temple."

Keating said Herman then ran through a series of yards before going back into the house he'd been in.

The tactical unit arrived within minutes with its armoured truck and set up in the yard by the door where Herman had gone into the house. They used a loudspeaker to order him out, but he did not exit.

Keating said they could see him through a basement window and it appeared he had someone held at gunpoint.

Members of the tactical unit went into house. Shortly after that, police and paramedics outside said they heard a volley of shots from inside.

Advanced care paramedic Jeffery Maxin, who was embedded with officers inside the tactical truck, was called into the house.

Herman was handcuffed on the floor at the top of a winding, narrow staircase. When Maxin got to him, Herman was covered in blood and gasping for breath. He had multiple gunshot wounds to his chest.

"He had too many wounds to centre mass, the likelihood of surviving those injuries was — nil," he said.

"I'd never seen anyone with so many wounds."

Paramedics got Herman onto a stretcher, into the ambulance and to Royal Emergency Hospital. He was pronounced dead in the emergency room.

A history of violence

Police knew all about Ronnie Glen Herman well before they began chasing him through yards in the Mayfair neighbourhood.

Nine months earlier, police had shot him in the arm, when he rushed police outside a house on Avenue L South in Saskatoon armed with a machete and replica handgun.

Two years earlier, in 2021, Herman was the subject of an RCMP alert in La Loche, just over 500 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, wanted for assault, assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and failure to comply with probation.

In 2009, when he was 22, Herman pleaded guilty to manslaughter for his role in the beating death of a teen in a parking lot in La Loche.

The four men and two women on the jury at this week's inquest will spend the week deconstructing the sequence of events that led to Herman's fatal shooting.

"The guns and gangs unit became aware that a 36-year-old male, who was wanted by La Loche RCMP, was in the 1300 block of Avenue E North and was armed with a gun," police Chief Troy Cooper wrote in a statement the following day. 

"The male was in breach of release conditions and had removed his electronic monitoring device."

People living in the houses near where Herman died say dozens of plainclothes and uniformed police with guns drawn converged on a two-storey house across from the Mayfair elementary school around 5:45 p.m. CST on Oct. 27, 2022.

No police or bystanders were hurt.

The established neighbourhood was busy at the time of the shooting — parent-teacher interviews had just started at the school and kids were out in the playground.

The inquest is expected to feature 19 witnesses, including a paramedic, a registered nurse, a pathologist, two civilians and 14 police.

Timothy Hawryluk is the presiding coroner.