No charges for officer, but the woman who saw ex-boyfriend killed still has questions
Roy Freake was killed by police in June 2021. Amanda Antle says his death was avoidable
For Amanda Antle, the investigation by Newfoundland and Labrador's serious-incident response team into her ex-boyfriend's killing confirmed much of what she already knew.
She was there, she felt Roy Freake press the knife into her neck, so it was no surprise that SIRT-NL's investigation found Freake was an imminent danger to her and others in her house.
The police oversight body in Newfoundland and Labrador ruled in late September that the officer who fired two bullets within moments of arriving, killing Freake on site, was justified in his actions. Antle doesn't disagree with that either.
But she does have questions, ones she feels the SIRT-NL report is silent on: why was Freake released in an agitated state? Why was he released in a community where he was banned? Why was he released with no way home?
It's been more than a year since Freake broke into her house and threatened her and their infant son. Police killed him that night, when, according to the SIRT-NL report, he refused to drop a knife that he pressed to Antle's neck.
Antle says she still wrestles with sleepless nights and fears she may never fully recover if she doesn't have the answers she needs.
"When my toddler is old enough to ask me these questions, how can I give him answers if I don't have them?" she said. "Until I get these answers, I'm not going to be able to live a full life."
Freake and Antle had a child together, Jack, and Antle said he acted like a father figure for her older son. When he was in a good state, she said, he was an amazing partner. But he struggled greatly with addiction and mental health issues, and that hung over their 10-year relationship.
'They knew'
Freake was released from court custody on June 10, 2021. A day earlier, he had been arrested for breaching a court order to not contact Antle. He was yelling at her at a house where she was staying, Antle said.
The next day he was brought before a judge and released. At that point, Antle estimates, he was probably away from home and without medication for 24 hours. Antle, as well as Freake's father, have told CBC News that Freake was released without his truck keys — it had been towed — and with no easy way to make the journey home to Fogo Island. He didn't even have his cigarettes, she said.
When Freake was released, Antle got a call from his father, warning her that Freake was out of jail, and he was mad, and he was threatening to hurt her.
A few hours later, when Antle heard a window smash in her house, she knew it was Freake breaking in.
Antle said if Freake's father knew that Freake was going to look for her, the police and the judge who dealt with him earlier that day ought to have known too.
"He was clearly arrested for the no-contact order and the judge himself allowed him to go out on bail, after uttering death threats," she said. "They were made quite aware when the RCMP came to talk to me after his arrest that Roy had a mental health issue.
"They knew everything they needed to know."
The SIRT-NL report revealed that the RCMP officer who shot and killed Freake was the same officer who released Freake from custody in Grand Falls-Windsor the previous day.
His statement, provided through his lawyer, said that on his release, Freake was "very angry and upset."
RCMP spokesperson Jolene Garland said in a statement that once a court orders a release of an individual, police do not have discretion to detain them any further, "provided no further criminal acts have occurred."
"Being angry or upset is not a criminal offence," she wrote in an email. "Police had no authorization to hold Mr. Freake, who was released by the court into the community. Upon his release, he would have been given reasonable time to exit the community, as per his conditions."
'Why were these things not done?'
Antle says if police or the court had held Freake longer, or released him in a different manner, his death just hours later could have been prevented.
"I absolutely believe, 100 per cent, in my heart, that it was preventable," she said. "They could have taken him and brought him to another town, they could have brought him to the ferry.… Why were these things not done?"
What if they waited, she wonders, for his father to come to Grand Falls-Windsor to pick him up? Or arrange to have him brought to Fogo Island and released from there?
But now that the investigation has been concluded, Antle doesn't know where to turn.
"I really do worry that I'm not going to get these answers, she said. "And that scares me, because if I don't get these answers, I'm never going to fully move on from that night."
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