The BC Coroners Service will hold an inquest into the death of a 35-year-old man who died in a shootout with Kamloops RCMP officers in September 2018.
It says the inquest into the death of Eugene Ethan Marcano, who was killed in Rose Hill on Sept. 14, 2018, will get underway on May 6 at the Kamloops Law Courts.
In May 2019, the Independent Investigations Office of B.C. cleared a Kamloops RCMP officer of wrongdoing in the incident. It found that Marcano initiated a shootout with police officers, who were responding to a suspicious and potentially impaired man in a rural area near Rose Hill.
“A gentleman was parked on the side of a rural road, and they engaged with him to try to find out more information. And as that occurred the gentleman went back inside the trailer that he was towing with his truck, and came out first with the point of a shotgun and fired towards the officers,” IIO Chief Civilian Officer Ronald McDonald said, at the time.
“What happened from that point forward can best be described as a shootout. There were in excess of 40 shots taken by police and 11 shots taken by the male. Only one shot from police struck him, which was fatal, causing him to go down.”
The officer who shot and killed Marcano was not required to – and did not participate – in the investigation. The police watchdog also found that the officers were acting in self-defence.
“Given the fact that the police were facing lethal threat from the affected person, they were justified and indeed it’s their duty to protect each other and themselves, and thus were justified in firing back against that deadly threat,” McDonald added, at the time.
A coroner’s inquest is a public inquiry that determines the facts related to a death, including the identity of the person who died and how, when, where and by what means they came to their death.
It will also make recommendations, where appropriate, to prevent similar deaths from happening again.
The inquest – which is mandatory for any deaths that occur while a person was detained by or in the custody of a peace officer – will begin at 9:30 a.m. on May 6.