Montreal police chief Fady Dagher said he was “extremely frustrated” to see people judge his officer following the shooting during which a bystander was killed on June 22 in Côte-des-Neiges.
Dagher’s comments come after reports suggested Wednesday that bystander Michel Mizrahi was actually fatally shot by the gunman, not the SPVM officer who appears in a video to have pointed her gun in Mizrahi’s direction moments before he falls to the ground.
While Dagher said he couldn’t confirm the information in the La Presse report, he said that if it is true, there is a lesson to be learned from the situation.
“Refrain from commenting, be careful when you judge — especially when you watch a video,” Dagher said in an interview with The Gazette. “Suddenly everybody became an expert … Put yourself in the place of my cop. All this time, she had to recover and listen to all those comments.”
The officer had been critically injured in the shootout, but her condition later stabilized in hospital.
“She was going through a few operations, she was in the hospital in a critical situation, she even went through a coma, and listening to all those people judging her … even some people accusing her of murder, because they watched that video,” Dagher said.
A gunman who adhered to incel ideology exchanged gunfire with Montreal police officers in Côte-des-Neiges that day. It was widely speculated that he planned to target the head offices of Pornhub.
Three people died in the exchange of gunfire outside the building: SPVM Const. Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, civilian Mizrahi, and the alleged shooter, 25-year-old Seth Hatfield.
Footage of the deaths of Benredouane and Mizrahi circulated widely online, prompting many to suggest, based on the videos, that the other officer exchanging gunfire with Hatfield had accidentally shot Mizrahi when he came up to her while she took cover behind a flower box.
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Authorities never confirmed who shot Mizrahi, and Quebec’s coroner’s office still wouldn’t answer when asked on Wednesday.
“At this stage, we are not in a position to confirm or deny this information,” spokesperson Jake Lamotta Granato said in an email. “The coroner’s investigative process remains confidential until the release of her final report. The coroner is continuing her work in order to fully clarify the causes and circumstances surrounding the three deaths.”
The province’s security ministry, which speaks on behalf of the lab that analyzes evidence for police investigations, also declined to comment on the case.
“The ministry cannot interfere with the conduct of an investigation or when the information could affect the administration of justice. It is therefore not possible to confirm or deny the information related to this investigation,” reads an emailed statement.
Quebec’s police watchdog, the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, did not respond to a media request Wednesday.
Dagher called the officer in question a hero who “deserves the best recognition.”
“If (the reports are) true, I’m very happy for her,” he said.
The Gazette’s Jesse Feith contributed to this report.