Ottawa police are apologizing for their handling of a 911 call from a white woman about a Black man she said wouldn’t move out of her way on a popular park trail in Barrhaven.
Ottawa police are apologizing for their handling of a 911 call from a white woman about a Black man she said wouldn’t move out of her way on a popular park trail.
Ntwali Bashizi, 21, was riding his bike on the Stonebridge Trail along the Jock River in Barrhaven on Monday afternoon when he stopped on a bridge for a short rest. He said he was listening to music on his headphones when he noticed a woman standing at the other end of the bridge.
“I noticed her sort of like yelling toward me or talking toward me,” the Carleton University student said.
“She said, ‘I’m going to wait here for you to get off the bridge,’ and, ‘You need to get off the bridge and let me walk by,’ ” he said.
She was trying to use [police] as a weapon against me.– Ntwali Bashizi
Bashizi told her it was within her right to wait until he was finished his rest, but there was enough distance between them for her to cross safely while adhering to physical distancing measures.
“It doesn’t matter whether or not we cross paths on the bridge or we cross paths on the trail,” he said he told her, noting it was the exact same distance either way.
Bashizi said she called him a “jackass” and started taking photos of him before calling the police.
That’s when he said he also began recording the incident, which he eventually posted to Instagram.
Ntwali Bashizi was riding his bike on a trail in Barrhaven when he paused on a bridge to take a break. He says a fellow hiker demanded he move from the bridge so she could pass, an interaction that resulted in her calling police and making threatening comments. CBC has obscured the woman’s face because we were unable to identify or interview her. 1:15
“She’s there for about five minutes on the phone with the police, like pleading for them to come and get me off of the bridge. She tells me to wait there, the police is coming,” he said.
After the phone call, Bashizi asked the woman if police were on their way. He claims she replied: “It’s not the police coming, but someone