A Manitoba family is left waiting for answers after an altercation with RCMP that left a man dead.
Family members have identified the man shot and killed by RCMP early Wednesday morning near Lake Manitoba First Nation as 18-year-old Bill Saunders.
His older sister Rebecca Saunders told CTV News that her brother was the kind of guy who loved to joke around and cared about his family.
“He’s not the type of person who would go out to hurt anyone else,” Saunders said.
“He was a good kid.”
Saunders said she got the call from her mother shortly after 6 a.m. Tuesday and knew immediately she was to receive bad news.
According to family members, Bill Saunders was in custody and being transported to Winnipeg, when there was an altercation on the side of the road.
The Independent Investigations Unit of Manitoba is now investigating.
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“He was shot in the shoulder,” Rebecca Saunders said about her brother.
“He jumped into the vehicle which was the unmarked, stolen vehicle and I guess he had taken the officer’s pistol.”
From there, Saunders said her brother made his way back to the family home in Eriksdale and addressed his mother before jumping back into the police vehicle.
“He said ‘I gotta go, I don’t know when I’ll be able to talk to you but I’ll call you when I can’. And that was the last thing he said to my mom and my sister,” Saunders said.
It was a call that never came for anxious family members desperately reaching out to friends by phone and online.
Instead, Saunders said the next visit the family received was from RCMP, informing them that Bill Saunders had been killed.
“There are a lot of questions we have,” Saunders said.
Lake Manitoba First Nation Chief Cornell McLean told CTV news that he believed the suspect shot by RCMP was the same man accused of robbing VLTs in his community early Sunday morning.
“I am very compassionate for the family of the deceased young man. But also compassionate for my members as well and hopefully this will put an end to the robberies and the violence in the community,” said McLean.
