The mother of a man killed by an RCMP officer in Thompson on Nov. 21 says the story she has heard from one of the passengers who was in the vehicle differs from what police have said about the incident so far.
Thirty-nine-year-old Steven Campbell was shot three times, according to one of the four other passengers in the vehicle at the time, says Campbell’s mother Shirley Huber, who lives in Alberta.
The account Huber heard was that Campbell’s car was not pulled over but that the RCMP officer pursuing him slammed his car into it and stopped him. Then, the witness told her, the officer fired nine shots into the car, hitting Campbell three times and a woman in the front passenger seat once, whom Huber says had to have a bullet removed from her brain.
“The girl swore to me that she did not resist,” said Huber. “They all had their hands up.”
Police said Nov. 21 that the officer pulled over a vehicle that was being driven erratically after a brief pursuit. As he was approaching the vehicle, the driver accelerated and the vehicle hit the officer who discharged his weapon, killing the driver, who was pronounced dead at the scene. The woman, who was a passenger in the vehicle, was transferred to hospital in Winnipeg for treatment of her injuries. Three other people were passengers in the vehicle; two did not suffer any injuries, said police, while the other sustained minor injuries unrelated to gunshots and was released from hospital after treatment.
Huber said she was told that the windshield on the driver’s side of Campbell’s vehicle was completely shattered and that there were bullet holes in the passenger side.
The officer involved in the shooting was taken to hospital for minor injuries and released.
The RCMP notified the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba (IIU) of the shooting. The IIU, which investigates all serious incidents involving on- or off-duty police officers in Manitoba, has assumed responsibility for the investigation and has investigators at the scene in Thompson. Because there was a fatality, the IIU will be requesting the appointment of a civilian monitor from the Manitoba Police Commission.
Huber said that the woman she spoke to had suffered two broken ribs from the impact of the RCMP vehicle hitting Campbell’s car and told her that the officer was limping when he got out of his vehicle before the shooting started.
One of the other two passengers, who were both men and not women as the Thompson Citizen previously reported, was struck with a Taser because he was afraid and refused to come out of the car when ordered by the officer. The other, Huber said, was taken to the drunk tank.
Huber said the woman who was with her son when he was killed said they had been drinking and that Campbell accelerated when the RCMP officer flashed his lights at them because he didn’t want to get caught for impaired driving, which he had been charged with before.
“My son was not an angel but he did not deserve to die the way he did,” said Huber, who received information that Campbell was being pulled over for expired tags on his licence plate.
She also said that the woman who was in the car at the time said police wanted them to sign statements about the incident but they refused because they did not think they were accurate.
Huber was in Thompson the week after the shooting for Campbell’s funeral and she and other family members will soon depart for a vacation in Hawaii that was planned before her son was killed.
“It was a very trying week that we had,” she said.
She also believes that the officer will face charges in her son’s death based on information that she has heard.
The worst part of the incident, Huber says, was not being able to find out what was going on. She found out that something had happened in the morning when she was contacted by a friend of Campbell’s from Thompson but couldn’t get any information from the RCMP until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. in the evening when they were given contact information for the IIU. All in all, it was about 12 hours from the time she found out something had happened until it was confirmed that Campbell had been shot and killed by an RCMP officer.
