Officers were reasonable in returning rifle to gunman: Victoria police chief

VICTORIA – The top constable in Victoria, B.C., says an independent watchdog has found that his officers acted reasonably when they returned a firearm to a man who later used the same weapon to kill two people and wound a third.

Angus Mitchell died in a shootout with police in the Fraser Valley in May 2012, just days after investigators connected him to the shooting injuries of his former landlord and two murders in a Metro Vancouver sushi restaurant.

Victoria Chief Constable Frank Elsner says the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner has informed him that their probe into his department’s handling of Mitchell’s case has concluded.

Elsner says the office found his officers’ actions in returning the weapon were reasonable in the circumstances, and hindsight can’t be used to define the conduct of police officers in such a tragic event.

He says his department has already taken steps to improve the firearms-investigation training of its 243 sworn members.

A coroner’s inquest heard last year that Mitchell was assessed at a Victoria hospital following a February 2012 incident at a doctor’s clinic, and just months later he got his rifle back and headed to Vancouver where the shootings occurred.