Fatal shooting of 15-year-old by RCMP leaves Samson Cree Nation reeling, chief says

The chief of the Samson Cree Nation says the death of a 15-year-old boy shot by police is a "tough loss" for the community that has impacted many.

"You just feel this ripple and energy in the community about this," Chief Vernon Saddleback said.

The teen, identified as Hoss Lightning from Samson Cree Nation, was fatally shot by officers Friday morning following a "confrontation," police said. 

Saddleback said the loss is significant and many people have been supporting the boy's family. He said the family wants to honour his memory. 

"When I sat with them, they just wanted to remind everybody out there that this young man who was killed had a story, that he had a life, that he had a reason, there was a purpose, there was a meaning to his life. And they didn't want anyone to forget that," he said in an interview Monday. 

Saddleback said he wants better outcomes for his people and also extended his condolences to the RCMP members involved in the shooting. 

"It's not a chief thing, it's a people thing. My hope out of all of this is that we do talk, we do learn some lessons, and we try and make life better just for everybody. This is very painful for the community."

Saddleback says the boy's family will speak publicly, once they have laid him to rest.

The boy had called 911 for help, alleging people were trying to kill him, RCMP said in a news release Friday.

Officers found the boy in Wetaskiwin, Alta., a city just north of the First Nation, with "several weapons" early Friday morning, RCMP said.

Officers were able to confiscate them, but a "confrontation" occurred that led to two Mounties firing their guns. The boy later died in hospital. 

WATCH | A 15-year-old boy has died after what police are calling a confrontation: 

Samson Cree Nation teen dead after 'confrontation' with RCMP, police say

3 months ago

Duration 1:50

The 15-year-old boy had called 911 for help, alleging people were trying to kill him, RCMP said on Friday. Officers found the boy in Wetaskiwin, Alta., a city north of the First Nation, with "several weapons."

Grand Chief of the Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations Cody Thomas told CBC in an interview that the loss is profound. 

"Somebody at that age is so young and the traumatic losses that we've been feeling in First Nations country because we're such small communities and we've been going through a lot of losses," he said.

"It's not just us as Enoch, [it's] throughout Turtle Island, Treaty 6, all my brothers and sisters, relations, we all share the same grief, loss."

Thomas said the teen's death hits close to home because he has a son the same age.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), the province's main police oversight agency, will investigate the incident. The RCMP has also launched its own investigation into the fatal shooting.

Thomas said he hopes that Indigenous people, particularly Elders, can be included in conversations about how Indigenous communities are policed. He added that he hopes there can be ongoing dialogue between ASIRT and other investigative powers and communities. 

"The communication aspect definitely needs to be addressed as well between the RCMP and us as Indigenous peoples, because in our treaty, they're our red coats. They are ideally supposed to protect us and provide services to us … But I don't really see that happening too often," he said. 

Many questions remain, experts say

Upon hearing the news of a 15-year-old boy's death after being shot by police, Temitope Oriola's first response was: "Here we go again."

"For me, this becomes another in a constellation of similar cases across our province," Oriola, a University of Alberta criminology professor, said in an interview. 

Oriola said the police's news release raises many questions that are left unanswered.

Patrick Watson, an assistant professor of criminology in Toronto, studies systems of police oversight and police accountability.

"I think the first question that always comes to mind is what kinds of pressures were the police under in this circumstance? What kinds of things were they seeing?" he said in an interview.

"The first thing that we always like to hear, as people who are concerned with these types of things, is what it was that … the two police officers believed led them or necessitated the use of lethal force in the circumstance."

Those are questions the public may never get the answers to, Watson said, because police are not legally obligated to provide an account of what happened.

"Even in lethal force situations, they'll sometimes surrender their notes. Sometimes they won't. We don't know the frequency with which this happens," he said. 

Oriola hopes police will offer more details in the coming days.   

"There's a need to provide more detail about the nature of this confrontation, and the texture of the threat that a 15-year-old boy posed to two officers such that they felt a need to deploy a lethal firepower."