Community vigil held in remembrance of St. John’s man shot and killed by police

About 40 people gathered in frigid temperatures Thursday evening to pay their respects and call for justice for Omar Mohammed, a 38-year old resident of St. John’s who was shot and killed by a Royal Newfoundland Constabulary (RNC) officer on June 12.

The community members gathered across from RNC headquarters at Fort Townshend in downtown St. John’s. Wrapped in scarves and blankets while an icy wind whipped the air and the wind chill dipped below -11 °C, they held battery-powered candles and photographs of Mohammed. A vase of flowers and arrangement of tealights surrounded a photo of Mohammed, while some attendees raised aloft a large Black Lives Matter banner.

“It’s really difficult to talk about justice when the cops have already investigated themselves and decided that they’re not guilty,” said Jude Benoit, a local anti-poverty activist.

“Same old story!” yelled one member of the crowd.

Benoit criticized the province’s social services for having failed Mohammed.

“Every single system that we have failed him,” said Benoit. “The mental health services let him down…it was one shitty thing after another that led him to be absolutely terrified by police. To quote his friends: ‘Omar thought it would be different here. He thought he was safe in this country.’ And he was not.”

Benoit along with other speakers criticized the province’s Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT), which on Wednesday released the report on their investigation into Mohammed’s shooting. The SIRT report absolved RNC officers of blame in the shooting and found no grounds for laying charges against them.

Mohammed was shot and killed at an Employment Centre in Regatta Plaza in St. John’s on June 12. According to the SIRT report, he was unhoused at the time, staying with a friend, and had been attempting to obtain income support. Employment Centre staff had previously refused to help him due to an outstanding warrant. When he arrived at the Centre on June 12 and was waiting for service, staff there secretly contacted the RNC who dispatched two officers, one of them a training cadet. The officers attempted to arrest Mohammed. The SIRT report states that video footage from the scene indicates Mohammed drew a hammer; the report also cites officer statements that he threw the hammer and drew a knife. An attempt by one officer to use a taser was unsuccessful, according to an RNC statement.

SIRT is a government agency created in 2017 which became fully operational in 2021. It was created in response to public concerns about police shootings in NL, including the high profile 2015 killing of Don Dunphy, a 58-year old injured worker who was shot and killed in his home by an RNC officer who went there to investigate tweets Dunphy made that were critical of the premier. SIRT is headed by criminal defense lawyer Michael King. The agency is permitted to appoint either civilians, current or former police officers as investigators but in the past has refused to disclose who its team of investigators are or whether they include police officers. On May 31 – less than two weeks before Mohammed’s killing – the agency announced its intention to begin collecting race-based data on police interactions in this province.

Attendees at the vigil were critical of the SIRT report’s failure to probe the broader context of Mohammed’s shooting by police, including previous RNC interventions against Mohammed. They say that a repeated pattern of interventions by police leading to violent arrests – instead of mental health supports and treatment – constituted unjust police surveillance and led to Mohammed’s being “terrified by police.” They also criticized the lack of any attempt to provide de-escalation or trauma-informed care on June 12.

“Instead of receiving support he received no de-escalation, no trauma informed care, and then he…was killed,” said Benoit.

Community member Meghan Hollett was one of the dozens who showed up to pay her respects at the vigil. She called Mohammed’s shooting “an unforgettable moment” in the province’s history.

“I needed to attend to pay respect to Omar and the Black and newcomer communities,” she said. “I want the larger community to recognize and remember this killing, and to send a message that this does not go unnoticed.”

She said she and others have been left with serious questions around the impact of Mohammed’s killing on the larger community.

As the vigil concluded, a statement from Black Lives Matter NL and the Anti-Racism Coalition NL was read out by organizers Sobia Shaikh and Raven Khadeja.

“We stand together with our community here and elsewhere as we feel despair over the loss of a member of the St. John’s Black, Muslim, migrant and unhoused community who was shot and killed by an RNC officer,” read Shaikh. “We deserve better. With you we feel outraged at the outcome of another police report that said this man deserved to die, and that the police take no accountability, no responsibility for his death. We asked and waited for answers. We didn’t get any answers we were seeking. The SIRT report we received yesterday gives us only more questions than answers. We’re not surprised because SIRT is not set up to give the community answers. We have serious concerns about some of the inconsistencies and missing information in that report.”

“The SIRT report and the police account suggests that the only thing that mattered was the minute before Omar was shot and killed,” Khadeja told the crowd. “The real failure here is the years leading up to this point. Not the hour before Omar was shot by a police officer. Not the twenty seconds from the police entering the room where he had been waiting. We have read and heard from his community that Omar was surveilled and harassed by the police – and I believe that – by the prison system and by psychiatric facilities for years. As a Black immigrant who has tried to access mental health, it is the most difficult thing in St. John’s. So I believe that. The real failure here is that Omar was unjustly surveilled and this ultimately led to his death.”

“What the police want us to believe is that they could not do anything else other than murder Omar,” said Shaikh. “As a community we reject the argument that death was the only possible outcome. We reject the SIRT report that killing a human being was the only appropriate response in the encounter that Omar Mohammed had with the RNC officer and cadet…We have to imagine something less violent, less reactive and reckless.”

Following chants of “Black Lives Matter!” attendees held a moment of silence for Mohammed.

Khadeja and Shaikh told the crowd that the community will be meeting to review and analyze the SIRT report, to pursue answers to their questions and ultimately to call for a public inquiry.

“We will continue to ask questions of the state, to demand justice for Omar on behalf of our community,” said Khadeja. “Our hearts go out to Omar Mohammed’s family and friends, those on this shore and others. Omar deserved better. This community deserves answers. Our community deserves better…We have to imagine better systems. This cannot be the final answer.”

In closing, Khadeja called for moves toward defunding and abolishing the police.

“There are so many people out there right now living on these streets like Omar who are so vulnerable to the police, and to these places that are meant to serve them but are not,” said Benoit.

“I know that the police are not the answer and I would like us in St. John’s to start moving toward abolishing the police. We need to defund the police, we need to take those resources and put them back to where they belong for the people.”

SIRT was approached for comment but did not respond to The Independent’s phone and email requests for an interview by press time.