A Vancouver Island jury has begun deliberations following coroner's inquest into the 2018 death of a man shot five times by police while under the influence on a wide range of hallucinogenic drugs and wielding a knife in his Shawnigan Lake trailer.
The inquest went to jury on Thursday (July 4) after three days of testimony that portrayed Christopher Bloomfield, 27, at the time of his death as a man in a “disturbed state” who was “not seeing the world as it really is,” and described a police response that spiralled quickly toward the use of deadly force.
The jury is tasked with deciding exactly how, when and by what means Bloomfield died, as well as providing any recommendations they see fit to prevent similar circumstances from occurring in the future.
Testimony began on Tuesday with the police officers involved giving their perspectives on what happened. That was followed Wednesday and Thursday by forensic experts and police use-of-force experts going over the finer details.
Police had mobilized on Nov. 10, 2018 after Bloomfield’s mother reported she had been drugged with LSD and assaulted by her son, and that he had threatened to kill himself if anyone came to the residence.
A 2021 report from the Independent Investigations Office of BC (IIO) — the police watchdog that investigates every police-involved death — says that when the mother came into the Shawnigan Lake RCMP detachment she told officers “Oh, he’ll just go ballistic…he might get aggressive…you can expect some violence.”
Police obtained a warrant and had an ambulance stationed nearby. One officer covered the back door while the other two entered through the front.
In written statements to the IIO, officers said that during an ensuing altercation Bloomfield advanced toward them while making downward stabbing motions with a knife.
At some point, one of the officers shot a taser at Bloomfield, but it did not work properly.
Bloomfield then lunged toward the officers with a knife and they shot several rounds towards him. One of the officers ended up with a slice in his glove that appeared to have been caused by a knife. Bloomfield was hit with five bullets. According to the autopsy, it was two shots to the chest that killed him.
One of the involved officers is reported to have told the third backup officer something to the effect of “We had no choice, he was going to kill himself, we were damned if we did or didn’t.”
An IIO investigator — who testified at the inquest — cleared officers of wrongdoing in this use of force, finding they were legally justified in defending themselves from grievous bodily harm.
Jurors heard this, and on Wednesday were given in full detail the list of drugs in Bloomfield’s bloodstream at the time of his death. These included PCP (angel dust), cannabis, MDMA (ecstasy), ketamine, psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and cocaine, as well as several other substances.
"What sets this list of drugs aside is the number of them that have hallucinogenic properties, or other psychotic-producing properties," Dr. Graham Jones told jurors. Jones said he has issued more than 30,000 toxicology reports in his career.
"I don't think I've seen a report quite like this one."
The jurors must decide whether it was a natural death, a suicide, a homicide, an accident, or the cause is undetermined.
Many of the questions from jurors throughout the inquest related to trying to determine whether Bloomfield intended suicide, and what the protocols are in place for police dealing with a situation involving mental health issues.
The jury can give recommendations on how to prevent such deaths in the future if they deem it is necessary, or decide not to.
Jurors have as much time as they need to deliberate, and once they deliver a verdict if recommendations are made those will be made public.
