Man, 18, shot to death by London police

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Neighbours are recalling the heavy police presence that descended on an east-end street before the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old by London police amid what investigators say was a call related to domestic violence.

Ontario’s police watchdog is investigating after they say police were called just before midnight Tuesday to a home on Wellesley Crescent, near the Clarke Road-Trafalgar Street intersection, and found a man in the home holding a knife. Another man and a girl had been stabbed, the watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, said.

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A third man in the home wasn’t injured. Two police officers fired their guns at the knife-wielding man, who was pronounced dead in hospital, the SIU said. A 17-year-old girl remained in hospital on Wednesday with life-threatening injuries while the injured man, 22, has been released.

“(Police) came screaming down the street and parked all over the place,” said one neighbour who has lived on the east-end street for 20 years. “We heard fighting.”

The neighbour, who didn’t give her name, said the home was occupied by renters so few people on the street knew them. She said she’s seen police at the home about three times since May.

Another neighbour, Leo Jacome, said he was unnerved by the heavy police presence on an otherwise quiet night. “I felt afraid. It’s not normal. It’s quiet here.”

Added neighbour Rose Mercado: “It’s a really quiet neighbourhood. I’m surprised this happened. People here mind their own business.”

Three investigators and two forensic investigators have been assigned to the case, the SIU said. A post-mortem was scheduled for Thursday.

The SIU investigates all cases of civilian injury or death involving police in Ontario.

This is the first fatal London police shooting sine July 2023, when 35-year-old Cesar Hernandez was shot dead during a standoff at a Pond Mills home he’d entered after shooting a man nearby. It’s believed there have now been six London police shootings since 2016, four of them fatal.

ndebono@postmedia.com

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