Man acquitted of RCMP shooting-threat charge

A Cape Dorset man accused of threatening to shoot an exhausted RCMP officer was found not guilty by a Nunavut court Sept. 13.

Qavavau Shaa, 19, was charged with uttering threats after he was arrested in July, 2010 for a shooting spree that terrorized Cape Dorset.

This past May, Shaa pleaded guilty to weapons and mischief charges in connection to that incident and is nearing the end of a 15-month sentence that included credit for nine months served in remand.

The charge for uttering threats arose during the period just after his arrest, when he was accused of threatening to shoot RCMP Sgt. James Maclaren.

After being arrested for firing shots and holding police at bay for several hours, an “angry, desperate and drunk” Shaa was treated for a “self-inflicted injury to his hand,” wrote Justice Robert Kilpatrick.

As Shaa was being readied to fly to Iqaluit, he complained that his hand hurt.

Kilpatrick wrote that Maclaren “had only two hours sleep in the previous 24 hours due to ongoing police emergencies in Cape Dorset.”

“The Sergeant was stern with Mr. Shaa,” Kilpatrick wrote.

“He told Mr. Shaa that he was selfish. He told Mr. Shaa that he was very fortunate that he had not killed others in the course of his armed standoff with the RCMP. The Sergeant told Mr. Shaa that he should grow up. Qavavau Shaa was upset by this exchange.”

Shaa testified that as he was being led out of cells in the Cape Dorset RCMP detachment to be taken to the airport, Maclaren told him he’d never return to the community.

Maclaren alleged he then heard Shaa say something like “I’m going to shoot you.”

But the Nuanvut Court of Justice heard that there was confusion over whether Shaa threatened to shoot Maclaren or sue him.

While testifying, Shaa, speaking mostly through an interpreter, said in English “I told him [Maclaren] I could shoo him for that.”

The interpreter told court that Shaa pronounced the English word “sue” as “shoo.”

The defence argued Maclaren was honestly mistaken about what he heard Shaa say. The Crown responded this was a made-up excuse.

But Kilpatrick wrote that such a ploy was unlikely. He said the court itself had problems distinguishing Shaa’s pronunciation of the words “sue” and “shoot”.

“A deliberate play on pronunciation designed to explain away a reference to ‘shoot’ would be the work of a genius,” the judge wrote.

Kilpatrick found the confusion over what Shaa actually said was enough to establish reasonable doubt.