A Crown attorney accused an OPP officer facing a manslaughter charge of making up his version of what happened in the seconds before his gun fired nearly four years ago, fatally wounding a man.
Const. Sean O’Rourke denied the allegation in court on Friday. He has been on trial this week in the shooting of 24-year-old Nicholas Grieves. On Thursday, he told the court that in the early hours of July 7, 2021, he tripped and fell into the front passenger window of the car carrying Grieves and two others, after they had stolen $40 worth of gas from a Dutton, Ont., gas station.
O’Rourke has pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter charge.
Grieves was a member of Six Nations of the Grand River but had been staying in Windsor.
O’Rourke had previously told the court, and testified again on Friday, that he and another officer attempted to perform a tandem stop of the car on Highway 401 when Grieves, driving the car, rammed his vehicle. That caused the car to spin out of control and land in a ditch.
That was when O’Rourke approached the car. He said that he had his gun drawn and on uneven ground he tripped, stumbled and landed head and shoulders in the car, with his gun inches from Grieves in the front seat.
“I was in a panic to get out,” O’Rourke said Friday. He said he feared for his safety because of the car’s “violent” impact with his cruiser, and led him to approach the car with his gun drawn. He also spoke to a “crazed” look in Grieves’s eyes, as well as his continual rummaging in the front console of the car — O’Rourke said, he believed, for a weapon.
Then, he says, the gun went off — and he’s not sure how. O’Rourke testified that his fingers remained on the slide of the gun.
“I will suggest your stumble theory is a fabrication,” said Crown attorney Jason Nicol on Friday. “You’re fabricating that stumble theory to cover up your own carelessness at pointing that gun at the occupants of the car.”
It was a theory that O’Rourke categorically denied.
Nicol also established that O’Rourke did not take the time — approximately, O’Rourke said, 20 seconds — to fix a broken radio before responding to the theft for gas call, nor did he call for backup beyond the second officer on scene despite his stated fear for his safety — and that he hadn’t communicated with that second officer since they spotted the car suspected in the gas theft.
“How could such a highly trained officer as yourself, how could you not have control of your trigger finger at all times,” Nicol asked.
O’Rourke replied that he had control of his fingers on the way into the car, but didn’t know as he made his way out of the car.
The court has previously heard from other OPP officers, including Sgt. Bradley Cooke who responded to the call with O’Rourke, and a firearm expert who had examined O’Rourke’s gun and found it to be in good working order.
Court was in session for just a little over two hours on Friday. The trial will reconvene on Tuesday.
