The Victoria police officer who fatally shot a woman in the back of the head with a “less lethal” weapon showed signs of shock after the shooting, an officer testified Monday during a public hearing into the 2019 death of Lisa Rauch.
Staff Sgt. John Musicco testified that it was his job to bring the officer, Ron Kirkwood, then a constable, back to VicPD headquarters after the shooting and to take photos of Kirkwood and the weapon.
“His hands are shaking. I’m getting a blank stare out of him,” said Musicco, who was a supervisor to Kirkwood on the day of the fatal shooting. “And I said, ‘Listen, we have to document it in terms of what your role was and what actually you did that evening.’ ”
Musicco typed up a brief document, known as a will-say, based on Kirkwood’s verbatim account of shooting, he told the public hearing.
Adjudicator Wally Oppal, a retired judge, is presiding over the hearing to determine whether Kirkwood committed misconduct under the Police Act in relation to Rauch’s death.
Rauch, 43, died on Dec. 29, 2019, after being removed from life support four days after she was shot in the back of the head with hard, plastic projectiles from an ARWEN gun, considered a “less lethal” option than a firearm.
Kirkwood, now a VicPD sergeant, faces allegations of abuse of authority in relation to firing an ARWEN gun at Rauch and neglect of duty in connection with his lack of documentation of the fatal shooting.
Kirkwood did not make notes at the time of the shooting beyond dictating the brief will-say.
“Did you have a discussion with him about whether or not he should be making notes?” Bradley Hickford, counsel for the public hearing, asked Musicco. Hickford’s role is to present all evidence relevant to the allegations, regardless of the position it supports, although he will eventually make an argument.
“I told him not to do anything,” Musicco replied.
“Until what?” Hickford asked.
Musicco responded with a story about his own experience fatally shooting a man in 2014.
“The reason that I bring that up is these incidents — the severity and the gravity — are very significant for the people involved,” he said.
Many officers are drawn to police work to help people, and killing someone on the job creates a significant internal conflict, he said.
“You ask yourself, what value was that? Or how did I help the situation when somebody has lost their life?” Musicco said.
Musicco gave Kirkwood the same advice he had been given in 2014, which was to not write anything down and to consult a lawyer. He felt they had properly documented the scene by seizing the ARWEN and Kirkwood’s clothing and completing the will-say.
“It was my responsibility to make sure that [Kirkwood] was starting to actually look after himself, and I needed to get him out of the police department as quickly as I could,” Musicco said. “So I layered that with saying, ‘Listen, don’t do anything else at this stage.’ ”
Based on advice from a police union agent and a lawyer, Kirkwood did not make notes at the time or provide a statement to the Independent Investigations Office of B.C. during the civilian oversight body’s investigation.
Sean Plater, a retired VicPD officer who was the union agent at the time, testified Monday there was distrust between police officers and the IIO. He said that was because the police watchdog was not supposed to pass statements made by officers being investigated to Crown counsel, but those statements were at times ending up with Crown counsel.
Plater testified he put Kirkwood in touch with a lawyer.
The ARWEN shooting occurred after Rauch locked herself inside a unit in a Pandora Avenue supportive housing unit on Christmas Day 2019. Police responding to a 911 call were told Rauch had been taking crystal methamphetamine, appeared to be experiencing psychosis, had threatened the tenant of the unit with a knife and was alone in the unit.
Officers have testified that the situation became dangerous to others in the building when smoke was seen coming from the window of the unit, and there was an urgent need to remove Rauch from the suite to extinguish the fire.
Oppal has heard that thick smoke that limited officers’ view into the unit to only a few feet.
Investigations by the IIO and the Vancouver Police Department on behalf of the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner cleared Kirkwood of wrongdoing in Rauch’s death. A retired judge who reviewed the VPD decision agreed with the finding.
Former police complaint commissioner Clayton Pecknold ordered a public hearing at the family’s request, saying the circumstances around Rauch’s death must “bear public scrutiny.”
An officer who was standing next to Kirkwood and is now in charge of the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team is scheduled to testify Tuesday.
Kirkwood is expected to testify Thursday.
Note: This is a corrected version of this story. A previous version said the document typed up by Musicco was the only statement Kirkwood had provided on the shooting.
