A provincial police officer (OPP) of Ontario faces a judge trial in a fatal shooting of an indigenous man in Chatham-Kent in July 2021.
The trial began on Monday at the Court of Justice of Ontario in Chatham. Constant Sean O’Rourke is accused of involuntary homicide. He declared himself innocent. A prior charge of criminal negligence that caused death was withdrawn.
On July 7, 2021, OPP responded to a call on a gas robbery of $ 40. The officers located the vehicle that is believed to be involved traveling west on the 401 highway and followed it.
The vehicle ended in the ditch dividing the road. A firearm was discharged and Nicholas Edward Grieves, a 24 -year -old man, later died in the hospital. Grieves was a member of six nations of the Grand River, but he had stayed in Windsor.
On Monday, Judge Bruce Thomas heard the crown exam by a Forensic investigator with the Special Investigation Unit, the provincial police guardian who investigated the case.
In addition, the Crown Lawyer Jason Nicol presented two videos filmed by OPP and SIU of July 7, 2021, and showed the photos of the court room on the scene, including some photos that show the red shirt used by the duel and a post mortem image that shows the bullet blow on his right shoulder. Methamphetamine and fentanyl were found in their blood, but they were not the cause of death.
The court also listened to an audio recording of dispatch communications.
“We are going to try to stop it,” says O’Rourke in that recording.
Defensor lawyer Sandy Khehra grilled to Joseph Typer, Siu’s forensic researcher, about the seized content of the vehicle, which included a knife under the front passenger seat.
Khehra showed the photos to the courtroom and asked if the forensic investigation showed whether the car was persecuted in the trench or finished.
“If he was led by his own power in the ditch, I can’t tell you that,” Typer replied.
Khehra also questioned Typer if he can estimate the distance from where the distribution car leaves the road and reached his final resting place in the ditch.
‘I had never heard the shot before … I put my eardrums’: promised
The court also listened to a testimony of Angela Keats, 28, who said she was the fiance of Tives and that they had been committed for two years before her death in 2021.
She said she was in the passenger seat that July. She said they went to Woodstock, where they collected a friend of his. She told the Court that they later went to her parents in Ingersoll.
“We were there to present (Dolores) for the first time,” he said crying.
According to Keats’s testimony, his friend used glass methamphetamine during a stop made after leaving Ingersoll. She said she didn’t know if Grieves also succeeded in using drugs. Khehra pushed Keats about whether she was also high, but denied having drugs that day.
From there, while they hardened Windsor, they stopped along the 401 highway to obtain gas, which was pumped by his friend, and then left. Khehra questioned Keats if it was the plan all the time to pump the gas and flee and she agreed.
Keats said a strange vehicle began to follow them shortly after they left the service station.
She said the vehicle was ahead of them, even after changing the lanes. During the defense interrogation, he said that the sights were suspected that it was the police. She said they began to accelerate and the car behind them hit them.
“I felt an impact and the car was out of control,” he said.
Keats told court that it happened so fast that the order of things is confusing. He said that shortly after the car was stationary, a police officer approached next to the passenger asking for “raising his hands” and then heard a strong blush.
“I had never heard the shot before … he put me in the eardrums. My ear was sounding immediately,” he said.
“He said ‘Oh, shit, help me get him out of the car’ … and then another officer and he took Nick out of the car.”
Keats told the court that the officers made CPR and requested emergency services.
“I was going crazy asking them if it’s going well,” he said.
She confessed to the court that gave the officers a false name because she did not want to be separated from the duel.
O’Rourke, who joined the Chatham-Kent OPP detachment in 2004, has been suspended with salary since he was charged by the unit in 2022.
The trial is expected to resume on Tuesday, last two weeks.
