Corey PeeaceFacebook
Corey Peeace and the Calgary police officer had met last year, leaving the 40-year-old truck driver incapacitated by a stun gun. When they met again on Friday evening, Mr. Peeace was killed.
Last week's fatal shooting of Mr. Peeace - by an officer who had used the stun gun on him 16 months earlier - has left the police force under investigation and a family seeking answers.
A woman, who family say was Mr. Peeace's live-in girlfriend, called 911 just before 8 Friday evening asking for help, police say. "A male in the house is heard saying 'you are going to die today,' and that information is relayed to the officers attending the call," Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson said in a statement Sunday.
Two officers were dispatched to the home, notorious among neighbours for its police history. At least one of the officers had been there before - using a stun gun in a 2010 "domestic dispute" arrest. He fired the gun Friday night.
When officers arrived Friday evening, they say they saw Mr. Peeace carrying a knife - police didn't specify what kind, while family claim it was a butter knife, saying Mr. Peeace was making a sandwich at the time. Family say the woman was drunk but that Mr. Peeace had just returned home from work.
"In this case, there was a clear call for help from within the home and all indications were that this was a volatile and dangerous situation that required immediate intervention," the police chief said.
Mr. Peeace was shot several times, dying on the scene in front of family, who are now questioning why police so quickly opened fire.
"You don't go into a house with guns blazing," said George Peeace, the victim's uncle, who hopes for third-party investigation into the shooting. "This is not over by a long shot. I'm not going to let it go."
Neither officer who responded had more than three years' experience, and neither was identified over the weekend. They've both been placed on 30-day leaves of absence.
Mr. Hanson extended his condolences to the family. The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, a quasi-police agency that investigates shootings involving Alberta police officers, is now handling the case. The elder Mr. Peeace dismissed that as insufficient.
"That's always the case, police investigating the police, blue investigating blue," he said, adding: "I want the truth and I want justice."
The family claims Mr. Peeace had planned on suing the Calgary Police after the 2010 arrest, but police say they have no record of legal action.
It's common for beat officers, who work in one area of the city, to respond to one address over the course of years, Mr. Hanson said, but there was no "indication this officer knew who he was dealing with when he attended that residence on Friday night."
There have been about half a dozen fatal shootings by police in Alberta so far this year. Mr. Peeace's death also comes in the wake of the death of Patrick Limoges, an innocent bystander killed in Montreal last Tuesday by errant gunfire while police shot and killed Mario Hamel, who was wielding a knife. A funeral for Mr. Limoges was held Sunday.