Stevenson complaint unsubstantiated, says OPCC

Heron Inquest ends with findings and recommendations

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The Office of the Police Complaint Commission has determined the complaint of Thomas Evon Stevenson's family to be unsubstantiated, after reviewing a secret report prepared by the Chief Constable of the Nelson Police Department.

Stevenson was killed in December, 2002 when Vancouver Police Department Sgt. Milligan fired three bullets into his chest as Stevenson sat in a stolen vehicle that had earlier been disabled and staked out by police. Milligan was standing in front of the car and said he fired after he saw Stevenson reach for a gun within the darkened vehicle. VPD investigators later found a toy plastic gun lying by the left rear wheel of the vehicle. Stevenson's fingerprints were not found on the toy pistol.

In January of 2004, a Coroner's jury determined the death was a homicide and recommended that police not investigate themselves and that video cameras be installed in police cars. To date, neither of these recommendations have been implemented.

The Nelson police chief was called in to perform an external investigation and he apparently produced a three part report. The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner has refused to let the Stevenson family or its lawyers see the report, but it has confirmed that no investigator performed a reconstruction of the incident scene to determine whether Sgt. Milligan's statements that he saw a gun before he fired were plausible.

The family's wrongful death lawsuit continues.

After a week of dramatic testimony, the four-man, one-woman jury at the coroner's inquest into the deaths of Sherry Heron, Anna Adams and Bryan Heron delivered its findings and recommendations.

The jury found that Sherry Heron and Anna Adams were the victims of homicide, while Bryan Heron's death was "undetermined". Seven recommendations for procedural improvement were directed to the RCMP and to the Mission Memorial Hospital.

Coroner Marj Paonessa and the jury had earlier heard that Senior Correctional Officer Bryan Heron received a restraining order at 3:33 p.m. on May 20, 2003, left work and went to Mission Memorial Hospital, where he walked in to his wife's hospital room and fatally shot her and her mother. The hospital staff had received a copy of the restraining order, but took no steps to keep Heron away or hide his wife from him. Bryan Heron died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the bush on May 23, 2003 as police closed in.

A week earlier (May 13, 2003), Sherry Heron's sister, brother and brother-in-law had gone to the Mission RCMP and reported incidents of domestic violence and threats by Bryan Heron against his hospitalized spouse. RCMP Cst. Mike Pfeifer interviewed a frightened and upset Sherry Heron that day, who confirmed the threats and said she feared for her and her family's safety. Cst. Pfeifer spoke to his own father, a corrections colleague of Byan Heron's, and was told Heron was a "good person". Cst. Pfeifer did not investigate the matter further.

The incident was remarkably similar to a tragedy in Veron seven years earlier, where an estranged husband killed nine members of his family before taking his own life. That incident also resulted in a coroner's inquest. At the time, a headline in The Province newspaper read, "RCMP ignored death threats". The article continued, "The Mounties ignored a woman's complaint that her estranged husband had threatened to kill her and her family, an inquest into their deaths heard yesterday."