Ontario’s police watchdog says it has reviewed security camera footage and interviewed the officers who responded to the call from the Toronto highrise where 29-year-old Regis Korchinski-Paquet fell to her death — after what her family says was a 911 call to get her help.
Ontario’s police watchdog says it has reviewed security camera footage and interviewed the officers who were at the Toronto highrise where 29-year-old Regis Korchinski-Paquet fell to her death — after what her family says was a 911 call that went terribly wrong.
But neither the footage nor the interviews will be made public, for now.
“While the investigation is ongoing, the details … will not be released in an effort to ensure the memories of other potential witnesses are not tainted,” the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) said in a news release Monday.
The SIU said it has interviewed six officers and four civilian witnesses. It expects to interview the family later this week.
The update comes after thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday to demand answers about the death of Korchinski-Paquet, who was black, and to protest the deaths of an unarmed black people at the hands of police.
Questions have swirled since Korchinski-Paquet’s death with her family, community advocates and various politicians asking what exactly happened in the moments leading up to her 24-storey fall from the balcony of her family’s apartment.
An online petition calling for transparency in the investigation has amassed over 161,000 signatures.
Concerns about role of race
Korchinski-Paquet’s relatives have said they worry race played a role in her death too, citing the cases of Andrew Loku in 2015 and of D’Andre Campbell who was fatally shot by police in nearby Brampton, in April, after what the SIU called a “domestic situation.” Campbell’s family said he suffered from mental illness.
“The family is extremely concerned that in recent times people with mental health distress issues across North America are ending up dead after interactions with the police,” their lawyer Knia Singh said last week.
A CBC News investigation found black people made up 36.5 per cent of fatalities involving Toronto police, despite accounting for