The head of the independent agency charged with investigating the shooting death of Greg Matters wishes he had been more clear in his public report about how the Prince George man was killed.
Independent Investigations Office chief civilian director Richard Rosenthal wrote in a letter last year that he should have provided more details about how the bullets fired by RCMP emergency response team member Cpl. Collin Warwick killed Matters after a Sept. 2012 incident in Pineview.
"In hindsight, it would have been appropriate to include the specific finding made by the pathologist relating to the trajectory of the wounds caused by the gunshots: namely that they were back to front and left to right," Rosenthal wrote in a Nov. 28, 2013 letter to three interest groups and obtained by the Citizen. "Had additional information from the pathologist's report been included in the report, it may have assisted the public in understanding the mechanism of injury and in particular, where the bullets entered and exited from Mr. Matters."
Rosenthal was writing in response to requests by three organizations - Justice for Girls, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the Pivot Legal Society - after evidence presented at a coroner's inquest appeared to contradict the cause of death cited in Rosenthal's report.
When Rosenthal made his report public in April 2013, he wrote that an emergency response team member "shot Mr. Matters with two bullets to the chest." But a forensic pathologist testified at a coroner's inquest in October 2013 that Matters was shot in the back.
The three interest groups requested that Rosenthal reexamine his findings in light of the discrepancy and explain why the Independent Investigations Office's report was different than the testimony at the inquest. They questioned the credibility of the investigation given the the seemingly contradictory evidence of Matters being shot in the chest or in the back.
Rosenthal replied that he had access to the full pathologist's report when he concluded that no criminal charges should be recommended against the officers involved and said he took the phrase "gunshot wounds to the chest" directly from what the pathologist submitted as the cause of death.
"I agree that the Public Report could have benefited from a more robust sourcing of the evidence which would have helped avoid the misunderstandings that have resulted from apparent conflicts between the testimony of the pathologist at the Coroner's Inquest and my Public Report," he wrote.
The Independent Investigations Office did not offer any further comment on the contents of the letter or the investigation when contacted by the Citizen on Tuesday, citing the ongoing inquest.
The confusion did not sit well with Matters' sister, Tracey, who said the issue of whether to lay criminal charges should be reviewed independently.
The coroner's inquest is continuing this week at the Prince George court house.
