Investigators examine a scene on County Road 17 in Kawartha Lakes, Ont., on Nov. 27, 2020.Fred Thornhill/The Canadian Press
Charges have been dropped against three Ontario Provincial Police officers who had been accused in the fatal shooting of an 18-month-old boy during a child abduction investigation, the police union said Monday.
In a written statement, Ontario Provincial Police Association president John Cerasuolo called it a correct and just decision.
“In this case it has been determined that on the totality of the evidence there was no reasonable prospect of conviction,” Cerasuolo said.
“Our officers were doing their job according to their training.”
The three constables were charged with manslaughter and criminal negligence causing death with a firearm in the death of 18-month-old Jameson Shapiro after a lengthy investigation by the province’s police watchdog into what happened on Nov. 26, 2020.
The Special Investigations Unit had said officers opened fire on Jameson’s father’s pickup truck with the child inside after the truck crashed into a police cruiser and injured an officer who was laying down a spike belt.
The SIU had said the truck was stopped by officers investigating reports that a father had abducted his son. Investigators recovered a pistol inside the pickup truck.
The agency had said evidence suggested police gunfire killed both Jameson and his 33-year-old father, but charges were only brought against the officers in Jameson’s death.
The SIU brought charges against constables Nathan Vanderheyden, Kenneth Pengelly and Grayson Cappus almost two years later. The agency attributed the delay in part to the time it took to get the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s forensic test results on some of the ballistic evidence.
The Ontario Ministry of Attorney General and the Special Investigations Unit did not immediately return a request for comment.