SIU clears London police after woman admitted to ICU following January arrest

Ontario's police watchdog has cleared a London police officer of criminal wrongdoing after a woman fell unconscious and was admitted into intensive care after an arrest that involved the use of a Taser.

The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) says the investigation dates back to the morning of Jan. 3, 2025, when police responded to a mental health call at a home in the area of Wharncliffe Road South and Emery Street West.

The SIU says a woman contacted 911 around 7:48 a.m. reporting that her 28-year-old daughter was experiencing a dissociative event, and did not recognize her, her aunt, or things in her own home.

The mother told authorities her daughter was being treated for epilepsy and had a pacemaker for her heart. She added her daughter had not shown this behaviour before, and had started a new medication with hallucinatory and mood swing side effects, according to the SIU.

After learning police had been contacted, the daughter left the home without winter attire, and carrying a phone and a pair of scissors, the SIU report says. The caller began following her daughter, and told police the 28-year-old was trying to enter a nearby home she thought was her own.

At the scene, four officers located the caller and her daughter, who was still carrying a pair of scissors and was attempting to enter the neighbour's home.

The SIU says the 28-year-old, identified in the report as the Complainant, refused to speak with police, and officers decided to take her into custody under the Mental Health Act.

"The Complainant did not go willingly with the officers. She backed up a distance and was seen to be holding a pair of scissors in her left hand," the SIU report said.

"She was subjected to two [conductive energy weapon] discharges fired by the [subject officer], the first of which appears to have been without effect. Officers took hold of the Complainant and controlled her on the ground."

Paramedics transported the woman to the hospital 20 minutes later. At that time, the report says the woman had calmed and was conscious. But at the hospital, she lost consciousness, experienced seizures, and was intubated and admitted to the intensive care unit.

Three SIU investigators were assigned to the case and interviewed the mother, daughter, another civilian witness, and the three witness officers at the scene. The subject officer who fired the conductive energy weapon, or CEW, declined to be interviewed, as is their right, but provided their case notes.

SIU Director Joseph Martino says he found no reasonable grounds to believe the officer committed a criminal offence in the woman's arrest and medical condition.

Police are immune from criminal liability under the Criminal Code for force used, provided it was reasonably necessary in order to execute an act they were required or authorized by law to do, he writes.

"With information at their disposal that the Complainant was in possession of scissors and of unsound mind, the officers, I am satisfied, were within their rights in moving to take her into custody pursuant to section 17 of the Mental Health Act," Martino writes.

There is also insufficient evidence the officer's use of force in firing the CEW twice was unwarranted, he writes. The three witness officers told the SIU the woman raised the scissors in one officer's direction at the time she was Tasered, something echoed in the subject officer's notes.

"The evidence does not deny that the Complainant might have been holding scissors, but indicates that the Complainant was not seen brandishing them at the time of her arrest," Martino writes. This version of events was contested by the four officers, he adds.

"As there is no reason to believe that one version of events proffered in the evidence is any likelier to be closer to the truth than that proffered by the officers, I am not persuaded there are reasonable and probable grounds on which to conclude that the [subject officer] acted precipitously when he discharged his CEW."

The report says a forensic pathologist couldn't provide a medical opinion whether the CEW led to her seizure or interfered with her pacemaker.