A Toronto police officer has been charged with careless use of a firearm after a man was shot in the arm outside a hotel last February.
According to the Special Investigations Unit, officers followed a vehicle into the parking lot of the Don Valley Hotel & Suites on Wynford Drive on the afternoon of Feb. 15, 2016.
The SIU says that there was then an interaction between the officer and one of the occupants of the vehicle.
During the course of that interaction, the SIU says that the officer’s firearm was discharged, causing the 31-year-old man to sustain a gunshot wound to his arm.
In a news release issued Wednesday, the SIU said that they have “reasonable grounds to believe” that the officer “committed a criminal offence in relation to the shooting injury sustained by the man.”
The SIU, however, has not said why police were pursuing the vehicle in the first place, only saying that it was “in relation to an investigation they were conducting.”
The victim required hospitalization but his injuries were not considered life-threatening.
Const. John De Sousa is expected to appear before the Ontario Court of Justice on Finch Avenue on March 1.
