“Some systematic, institutionalized fuckery going on.”

In July 2018, 17-year-old Riley Fairholm was shot dead by a Sûreté du Québec police officer on the deserted streets of Lac Brome. This episode is an interview with Riley’s mother, Tracy Wing. We talk about her advocacy, her lawsuit against the Quebec police, and her home town of Knowlton, real life location of the fictitious Three Pines in the Louise Penny novels featuring super Surete du Quebec investigator, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.

Family of slain teen files lawsuit against SQ and officer

In July 2018, the Sûreté du Québec responded to a 911 call about a man who was walking the streets of Lac-Brome with a weapon. Several officers arrived on the scene and within about a minute, one shot 17-year-old Riley Fairholm in the head.

Katelyn Thomas  –  Montreal Gazette Publishing date: July 28, 2021  

Three years after 17-year-old Riley Fairholm was killed by provincial police in the Eastern Townships, his family has filed a lawsuit against the force and the officer who fired the gun.

“It’s something that we feel like we have to do in order to get some accountability,” Fairholm’s mother, Tracy Wing, told the Montreal Gazette Wednesday. “I feel that the intervention was really short. They didn’t take time to negotiate, and I understand that my son was a threat — I can deal with that — but I don’t understand why they had to kill him.”

The lawsuit, filed with the Quebec Superior Court on July 13, seeks more than $700,000 in damages for Fairholm’s parents and sisters, including $100,000 in punitive damages from the officer who fired the gun. Joël Desruisseaux is named in the lawsuit as the officer in question.

Just after 1 a.m. on July 25, 2018, the Sûreté du Québec responded to a 911 call about a man who was walking the streets of Lac-Brome with a weapon. Several officers arrived on the scene and within about a minute, one shot Fairholm in the head.

“They killed my son in 60 seconds, from the minute they saw him,” Wing said. “And I believe that police officer was negligent, and it caused some damage. We’re damaged by that — all of us.”

The lawsuit states the police intervention took place in the context of a mental health crisis — Fairholm had shown signs of suicidal ideation prior to the event — and he should therefore have been handled as a vulnerable person in need of assistance. It says police should have negotiated with Fairholm and attempted to de-escalate the situation.

Police did the opposite, the lawsuit states, by not adapting their intervention to his mental state or considering that he was outside an empty business in the middle of the night.

“The attempted discussions lasted less than a minute,” the lawsuit says. “Attempts to talk only consisted of repeating the same orders over a loudspeaker.”

It also says the officers erred by not using a less powerful weapon.

“The policeman who fired used excessive and disproportionate force on a 17-year-old boy in distress,” the lawsuit says. “The police would have been able to use less force in order to carry out his arrest, or rather, and above all, to provide him with the necessary assistance.”

It wasn’t until months after Fairholm’s death that his parents learned the officer had shot him in the head. They weren’t allowed to see their son at the hospital where he had been taken after the shooting.

Wing and her ex-husband, Larry Fairholm, filed complaints against the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI) and the SQ with the police ethics commissioner, claiming officers broke protocol and tainted the investigation into their son’s death.

In October 2019, following an investigation by the BEI, Quebec’s office of criminal prosecutions (DPCP) said officers involved in the incident had followed the law and that no charges would be laid. Since Fairholm refused to drop his weapon, the DPCP said, he “could have fired at any moment.” The lawsuit states the weapon was a pellet gun.

The Quebec coroner’s office recently announced it would hold a public inquiry into the case.

Three years after Fairholm’s death, his family is still awaiting answers. In addition to feeling grief and despair, they say they have lost confidence in police.

“There’s mistrust everywhere, in all the institutions, because it’s been so difficult to get any information — whether it’s from the prosecutor, the BEI, the SQ or even the coroner,” Wing said. “I’m very grateful that I have a public inquiry from the coroner, but you know, it’s been over three years and it’s appalling to me that it’s taking this long.”

Wing hopes the lawsuit will shed some light on the officer’s thought process.

“He didn’t shoot him in centre mass, so I’m wondering what was he taught at the police academy,” she said.

“If we do have a positive verdict in the lawsuit, that would mean that someone other than I and my family and our friends and many supporters that we have would say that, yes, there was this fault there, and it could have been better — that there’s some responsibility to be had by the SQ, because without their actions, my son would still be alive and we wouldn’t be suffering.”

The Sûreté du Québec declined to comment, “as the case is the subject of legal proceedings.”