A Vancouver police officer who shot a man eight times and killed him — firing a final bullet into the man’s head as he crawled on his knees — will not face criminal charges, B.C.’s criminal justice branch said yesterday.
Paul Boyd, a 39-year-old animator with bipolar disorder, was shot and killed in August 2007 on Granville Street between 15th and 16th avenues after he attacked police officers with a bike chain and padlock.
A decision, issued yesterday, more than two years after Boyd’s death, concluded that there isn’t enough evidence to prove excessive use of force by the officer.
Boyd, who had quit taking one of his medications four days before the Aug. 13 incident, injured two of the four officers who responded to an altercation between himself and another man at a bus stop on South Granville.
He struck one officer in the head with a bike chain and punched another repeatedly with the chain held in his fist.
Boyd was shot as he slowly walked toward another officer, ignoring commands to stop and drop to the ground.
After he was shot, Boyd got back to his feet and continued toward the officer. He was shot again and again, getting up after every shot.
He was on his hands and knees when he was shot for the final time in the head.
The shooting officer fired nine times, hitting Boyd eight times.
He believed he had only shot four or five times and thought Boyd was wearing body armour because he kept getting up.
He never saw Boyd drop the chain, which he did after being shot several times, nor hear one of the other officers tell him to stop shooting. He also thought Boyd was almost standing upright when he fired the final shot.
