19-year-old student shot by Winnipeg police was having mental-health crisis, lawyer says
Posted January 2, 2024 4:16 pm.
Last Updated January 2, 2024 7:13 pm.
A lawyer for the family of a man fatally shot by Winnipeg police says the university student was experiencing a mental-health crisis.
Police have said officers responded to a call about someone acting erratically at an apartment Sunday afternoon, were confronted by a man armed with two knives and one officer shot him.
BACKGROUND: 19-year-old armed with knives fatally shot by police near U of M campus: WPS
The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba, the province’s police watchdog, is probing the matter.
Lawyer Jean-Rene Kwilu says the man was a 19-year-old student from Nigeria, Afolabi Opaso.
Kwilu says people who were in the apartment called police and said Opaso was having a crisis but was not a threat to anyone.
He says Opaso’s family is looking for answers as to why the call was not treated as a mental-health situation, which could have allowed a clinician to join the response.
