Vigil held for young man shot by Transit Police in Surrey

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SURREY (NEWS1130) – The life of a young man shot by Transit Police in Surrey has been honoured today during a vigil.

Navarone Woods was killed inside a Safeway on December 28th after police responded to a call about a distraught man with a knife.

Organizer Dave Diewart says the gathering was also an opportunity to raise some questions about officers’ actions leading up to the 23-year-old’s death.

“Police seem to be going quickly to lethal force, rather than using tactics of de-escalation. I think another thing is, what are Transit Police doing in a Safeway store? This is not transit property.”

Diewart says things seem to be getting out of control. “There have been eight deaths by police in BC, which is quite an astounding number over the course of a few months.”

Witnesses had said Woods was stabbing himself and when officers told him to drop the knife, he ignored the demand and came at them.

Diewart says there are so questions that need answering. “When the investigation goes into the independent investigators office, there’s kind of a complete silence about any details so, there’s just a lot of unknowns as to what was going on and what transpired. We had heard that he had, in the previous day, been to Surrey Memorial Hospital. We don’t know the details of all of that, whether he was treated there or if he wasn’t treated and just left.”

According to Woods’ family, he had no history of mental illness. “I think the quick discourse around somebody having this encounter with the police and them being labeled as having a mental illness is problematic,” Diewart adds.

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