An Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer is facing a judge-alone trial into a fatal shooting of an Indigenous man in Chatham-Kent in July 2021.
The trial began Monday at the Ontario Court of Justice in Chatham. Const. Sean O’Rourke is charged with manslaughter. He has pleaded not guilty. A previous charge of criminal negligence causing death was withdrawn.
On July 7, 2021, OPP responded to a call about a gasoline theft of $40. Officers located the vehicle believed to be involved travelling westbound on Highway 401 and followed it.
The vehicle ended up in the ditch dividing the highway. A firearm was discharged and Nicholas Edward Grieves, a 24-year-old-man, later died in hospital. Grieves was a member of Six Nations of the Grand River but had been staying in Windsor.
On Monday, Justice Bruce Thomas heard the Crown’s examination of a forensic investigator with the Special Investigations Unit, the provincial police watchdog that investigated the case.
Additionally, Crown attorney Jason Nicol presented two videos shot by OPP and SIU from July 7, 2021, and showed the packed courtroom 36 photos from the scene including a few photos showing the red T-shirt worn by Grieves and a post-mortem picture showing the bullet strike in his right shoulder. Methamphetamine and fentanyl were found in his blood but were not the cause of death.
The court also heard an audio recording of the dispatch communications.
“We are gonna try to stop him,” says O’Rourke in that recording.
Defence lawyer Sandy Khehra grilled Joseph Typer, the SIU forensic investigator, on the contents seized from the vehicle, which included a knife under the front passenger’s seat.
Khehra showed the photos to the courtroom and asked if the forensic investigation showed whether the car was chased into the ditch or ended up itself.
“If it was driven by its own power into the ditch, I can’t tell you that,” replied Typer.
Khehra also questioned Typer if he can estimate the distance from where Grieves’ car leaves the road and reached its final resting place in the ditch.
The court also heard testimony from Angela Keats, 28, who said she was Grieves’ fiance and they had been engaged for two years before his death in 2021.
She said she was in the passenger seat that July day. She said they went to Woodstock where they picked up a friend of theirs. She told the court they then made their way to her parents’ in Ingersoll.
“We went there so I can introduce him (Grieves) for the first time,” she said in tears.
According to Keats’ testimony, their friend used crystal meth during a stop made after they left Ingersoll. She said she didn’t know if Grieves was successful in using the drug as well. Khehra pushed Keats on whether she was high as well, but she denied doing drugs that day.
From there, while enroute to Windsor, they stopped along Highway 401 for gas, which was pumped by their friend, and then drove off. Khehra questioned Keats on whether it was the plan all along to pump the gas and flee and she agreed.
Keats said a strange vehicle began following them soon after they left the gas station.
She said the vehicle was ahead of them, even after switching the lanes. During the cross examination from the defence, she said Grieves had the suspicion it was police. She said they started speeding and the car behind them hit them.
“I felt an impact and the car was spun out of control,” she said.
Keats told the court that it happened so fast that the order of things is fuzzy. She said soon after the car was stationary, a police officer came up to the passenger side asking to “put the hands up” and then she heard a loud ringing.
“I had never heard the gunshot before… it popped my eardrums. My ear was immediately ringing,” she said.
“He said ‘oh shit, help me get him out of the car’… and then another officer and he took Nick out of the car.”
Keats told the court the officers performed CPR and called for emergency services.
“I was freaking out asking them if he is going to be OK,” she said.
She confessed to the court that she gave the officers a fake name because she didn’t want to be separated from Grieves.
O’Rourke, who joined the Chatham-Kent OPP detachment in 2004, has been suspended with pay since being charged by the unit in 2022.
The trial, which resumes Tuesday, is expected to last two weeks.
