The Special Investigations Unit says it has ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe the officer committed a criminal offence in the July 30, 2025 shooting<\/p>\n
TORONTO \u2014 Ontario’s police watchdog has charged a Toronto police officer with manslaughter after a man was fatally shot in a Niagara Falls hotel last year.<\/p>\n
The Special Investigations Unit says it has reasonable grounds to believe that Const. Andrew Lawson committed a criminal offence in the July 30, 2025 shooting.<\/p>\n
The SIU says a repeat offender parole enforcement squad, made up of officers from various police services, had gone to the hotel to look for a man who was the target of a Canada-wide parole revocation warrant.<\/p>\n
The watchdog says there was “an interaction” between police officers and the 40-year-old man, and one officer fired his gun. The man was struck and later pronounced dead in hospital.<\/p>\n
Lawson faces one count of manslaughter and was released on an undertaking with conditions after his arrest. The charge against him has not been tested in court.<\/p>\n
A Toronto police spokesperson says 52-year-old Lawson, who has 30 years of service, has been suspended with pay in accordance with the Community Safety and Policing Act.<\/p>\n
The SIU said the officer is due to appear in a St. Catharines court on May 6.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2026.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Special Investigations Unit says it has ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe the officer committed a criminal offence in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-606516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}