Photos of armed ERT members released at B.C. soldier’s death inquest

PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. – Photos were released Tuesday of RCMP emergency response team members who surrounded a former peacekeeper before he was fatally shot.

The photos show the officers, their faces blurred, dressed the way they were the night Greg Matters was killed, in head-to-toe combat gear, wearing flak vests and armed with M16 rifles.

The lawyer for the RCMP asked the judge to ban publication of the photos showing constables Hipkin, Reddeman and Merriman and corporals Arnold and Warwick, who fired the fatal bullets. The officers first names weren’t released.

The lawyer for the Matters’s family said the photos depicting the officers the way they looked to Matters, a veteran in treatment for post-traumatic stress, were a central theme in the inquest and should be available to the public.

Coroner Chico Newell ruled that the photos would be released, but with the faces of the men obscured so that individual members could not be identified.

Matters was shot in September 2012 by a member of the emergency response team sent to arrest him on a charge of assaulting his brother.

The inquest originally scheduled for just last week is continuing this week.