Amyotte’s cousin, Samantha Wilson, told CBC he was in Vancouver visiting family, including two of his children. Wilson said that according to witnesses, including another cousin, Amyotte was distraught after being sprayed with a knife in the moments before police arrived on the scene. “He was asking bystanders for help, to call 911. I know that when help arrived, he did not comply with their request to lie on the ground and shots were fired and he died,” she said. Watch | Samantha Wilson talks about her cousin’s death in Vancouver:
The family is speaking out about a man who died after being shot by a police gun
The cousin of Chris Amyotte, the man identified as the person who died after being shot by Vancouver police at gunpoint, says the family is still processing Amyotte’s unexpected death and wants more answers from police. “He was an unarmed man basically begging for help. He was in obvious pain from the knife being over his clothes and on his skin. An eyewitness said he tried to use water to lessen the effects of the bear’s knife on him and the it actually made it worse,” he said. Witnesses told the CBC that Amyotte had taken off his clothes and was standing with milk he had taken from a convenience store in the 300 block of East Hastings Street, just before he was shot and died on the sidewalk. The Vancouver Police Department has said little about the incident, other than issuing a brief statement that did not mention the shooting. It read in part: “After an interaction with police, the man was taken into custody. He then suffered a medical problem and lost consciousness. The man died at the scene despite life-saving efforts.” On Tuesday, a VPD spokesperson confirmed that police shot the man with a handgun, but would not answer the question of whether he was unarmed, instead referring inquiries to the province’s Independent Investigations Office (IIO), B.C.’s police watchdog. An IIO spokesman said they could not comment on the specifics of the case at this time. Chris Amyotte in 2016 a photo. (Submitted by Samantha Wilson) Wilson said Amyotte was a devoted father and husband whose family hails from the Rolling River First Nation in Manitoba, an Ojibway community. “My cousin Chris was very outgoing. He was the kind of person you’d expect to show up at a family function with all the jokes. The guy who broke the ice with everyone and started teasing everyone,” she said.
IIO research backlog
The investigation into the shooting is now in the hands of BC’s Independent Bureau of Investigation, whose mandate is to “conduct investigations into police-related incidents that result in death or serious harm to determine whether an officer may have committed offense”. An IIO spokeswoman could not say how long the investigation would take. “We do not have an expected timeline for the completion of this or any other investigation, as many complex factors play into the time it will take,” said Rebecca Whalen, IIO media and communications liaison. Whalen said IIO investigations are taking longer to complete and the agency is seeing a “significant increase” in new incidents. As of 2019, the average number of days the IIO spends on an investigation has increased from 46 to 68 days due to increasing workloads and an “inability to attract and hire a full complement of investigators,” according to the agency. last annual report.
