The province's Special Investigation Unit (SIU) has determined police did not commit a criminal offence in connection to a Listowel woman's injuries after jumping from a balcony.
According to the SIU's report, OPP investigated a domestic disturbance at an apartment building on Main Street East and Wallace Avenue North in Listowel on Apri 19, shortly before 9 p.m.
The SIU is a civilian law enforcement agency that investigates incidents involving officials, including police, where there has been death, serious injury, the discharge of a firearm at a person or an allegation of sexual assault.
One of the people involved in the incident was a 40-year-old woman wanted by police for breaching the terms of a judicial release order.
According to evidence in the report, the woman was banned from the apartment building and was just out of prison. The woman had removed a monitoring device.
When no one answered the door, officers entered an apartment unit and located the woman hiding in a closet. She was acting strange and had put on a wig.
She stepped out from the closet at the officers’ request and proceeded to walk past them out of the room. The officers followed her into an adjacent bedroom as she 'made her way onto a balcony and jumped', the SIU report stated.
The woman was taken to hospital and diagnosed with multiple fractures.
SIU Director Joseph Martino determined there were no reasonable grounds to believe that a police officer committed a criminal offence in connection with the woman’s actions on the balcony. There was no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in the case, the report stated, and the file was closed.
