The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission – a federal government agency tasked with examining complaints about the RCMP – announced on Tuesday that it would investigate the 2016 death of Colten Boushie and the events that followed.
The 22-year-old was shot in the head after he and four friends from Red Pheasant First Nation drove on to a rural property in Saskatchewan. A lawyer for Gerald Stanley, the farmer who was holding the semi-automatic pistol that killed Boushie, described the shooting as a “freak accident”.
Last month Stanley, 56, was acquitted of second-degree murder by a seemingly all-white jury in a verdict that sparked rallies across the country and prompted calls for justice reform.
On Wednesday, Saskatchewan’s public prosecutions office said the Crown would not appeal the verdict, after coming to the conclusion that there was no legal basis to do so.
The 2016 shooting set the province on edge, laying bare the deep fissures that persist between some indigenous and non-indigenous communities.
First Nations leaders criticised the RCMP for fuelling tensions with a press release, sent out after the shooting, that said three occupants of the car had been taken into custody as part of a related theft investigation and another male was being sought. No charges were ever laid.
“The news release provided just enough prejudicial information for the average reader to draw their own conclusions that the shooting was somehow justified,” Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations said in 2016.
Source: theguardian
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