The B.C. Coroners Service has identified the 49-year-old man who died as the result of a police shooting in Nanaimo on Tuesday.
Craig Andrew Ford was in the 3600 block of Country Club Drive at 10:45 a.m. when he was shot in an encounter with the RCMP. Officers went to the area after receiving a report of a man with a knife.
Ford was transported to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, “but could not be resuscitated,” said coroner spokeswoman Barb McLintock.
A Nanaimo man with the same name last year pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing bodily harm in connection with a crash in Vancouver.
On March 12, 2014, Craig Ford drove 5 1/2 kilometres in the wrong direction down the busy Upper Levels Highway in West Vancouver, colliding with a minivan carrying a family of four. The court heard he was high on the drug GHB at the time.
In total, six people in three vehicles were involved in the crash. Ford and a toddler in another vehicle were injured.
Ford was arrested Sunday for breaching his probation. He was supposed to appear on that charge in Nanaimo provincial court on June 21.
The B.C. Coroners Service and the Independent Investigations Office are investigating Tuesday’s shooting.
While the IIO will investigate whether any offences were committed by the police officers involved in the shooting, the coroners service says its mandate in such cases is broader.
“The coroner’s investigation may look at the events which led up to the final fatal outcome and whether there are reasonable and practical recommendations that could be made which might prevent future deaths in similar circumstances,” McLintock said.
Few details have been released about the incident.
RCMP officers went to the area of Norwell Drive and Highway 19A, near Wellington Secondary School, about 10:20 a.m. Tuesday after receiving a report of a man carrying a knife.
A man was found nearby on Country Club Drive. During the ensuing encounter, shots were fired by police.
Later, an RCMP cruiser with a yellow tarp over the back window was blocked off by police tape in the parking lot of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, on Departure Bay Road, while investigators secured the scene.
Dairy Queen janitor David McLellan said he spotted a man brandishing a knife in the restaurant’s parking lot.
“He was just holding a knife with both hands holding it straight up and he was looking around, looking around like he was looking around for somebody to do harm to, or maybe to himself, I’m not sure,” McLellan told CHEK News on the day of the shooting.
McLellan said he saw the man race along Norwell Drive, toward St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.
“He was holding the handle with both hands and the blade was just sticking up and he was walking around,” McLellan said.
He said the man was also wearing heavy winter boots.
“That really caught my eye, you know,” he said. “You had a bad feeling. Yeah, I had a bad feeling that he was going to end up doing something to somebody.”
— With a file from Louise Dickson
