WINNIPEG -- A former Winnipeg police officer says he saw a knife on the ground at the scene of a fatal police shooting that is now the subject of an inquest.
Retired sergeant Jim Pelland told court Tuesday that he arrived outside the home of Craig McDougall about five minutes after McDougall had been shot by another officer.
He said he saw an ambulance crew working on McDougall, who was lying on the ground, and a knife a short distance away.
Police have said McDougall was shot after ignoring repeated commands to drop a knife, but McDougall's family say he only had a cellphone in his hands.
McDougall was 26 when he was shot after police responded to a disturbance in the early morning of Aug. 2, 2008.
The inquest into the shooting has been given a broader mandate to examine whether systemic racism was a factor in the indigenous man's death.
