By Gary McKinnon

FATALITY INQUIRY

Fatality inquiry underway into RCMP officer’s death

Apr 25, 2019 | 7:02 AM

ST. ALBERT- A fatality inquiry has been told the man who killed an RCMP officer at an Edmonton-area casino was wanted on 29 warrants related to four separate crimes.

Career-criminal Shawn Rehn was out on bail when he killed Constable David Wynn and wounded an auxiliary constable in 2015.

Sergeant Ken Bruns of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team told the inquiry that Wynn and the auxiliary constable tracked a suspected truck thief to the casino and both were shot in a brief struggle before Rehn escaped.

Wynne died from a head wound and Rehn later took his own life when officers found him holed up at a home on a nearby acreage.

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Medical examiner, Doctor Mitchell Weinberg, testified that Rehn had used cocaine and a high quantity of methamphetamine before his suicide.

Assistant deputy minister Eric Tolppanen also told the fatality inquiry that the province was right not to force prosecutors to tell bail hearings about a suspect’s criminal record.

The Crown at Rehn’s bail hearing had been represented by a police officer, not a prosecutor.

That practice has stopped since Wynn’s death.

Fatality inquiry lawyer Lionel Whittaker asked Tolppanen whether prosecutors should be legally required to tell bail judges about a suspect’s criminal record.

The requirement was part of a private member’s bill, named Wynn’s Law, that was defeated in Parliament in 2017.

Tolppanen called the provision unnecessary.

Shelly Wynn, the Mountie’s widow, says she understands justice officials have reasons for not forcing prosecutors to tell bail hearings about a suspect’s criminal record.

But she says that information could have prevented the officers from being shot.

(The Canadian Press)