TORONTO - Ontario's highest court has upheld a decision clearing a Toronto police officer of a homicide charge in the shooting death of a man during a drug and weapon search.
Const. David Cavanagh had been charged with second-degree murder, but two lower court judges separately ruled the death of Eric Osawe was accidental.
He was cleared after a preliminary inquiry judge decided there wasn't enough evidence to commit Cavanagh to trial, but the Crown appealed, asking for him to be tried instead on a manslaughter charge.
The Superior Court last year dismissed that appeal, but the Crown took the case to Ontario's Appeal Court.
In a ruling released Wednesday it too sided with the preliminary inquiry judge and dismissed the appeal, leaving Cavanagh cleared of the charges.
Cavanagh was part of an Emergency Task Force team that burst into Osawe's west-end Toronto apartment on Sept. 29, 2010, on a search warrant for cocaine and a handgun.
