SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. — One year to the day since the unimaginable happened, they gathered to share stories of sorrow, anger, regret and more than anything – love.
Family, friends and supporters of Jeremy Stephens attended a small remembrance service in his honour at Summerside’s Memorial Square Monday afternoon.
Stephens was shot and killed by Summerside police officers during an arrest attempt on May 27, 2018. They were trying to apprehend him for his alleged involvement in a violent robbery the night before.
Among those who attended on Monday, was Stephens’s niece, Alexis Skiffington.
Skiffington spoke to those in attendance about how she’d given birth to her son just a few weeks prior to Stephens’s death. Despite their family being close with each other, she wouldn’t let her uncle see her child as he was using drugs at that time and she didn’t want her child anywhere exposed to it.
When Stephens’s died, she just kept thinking about that decision, she said, and even though she made it for the right reasons at the time, it meant Stephens never got to meet her son.
That’s one of the many things she struggles with about his death, she said.
“We see a lot of him in my little boy. That brings me a lot of peace.”
The memorial was nice, she added, but the family is still raw, even a year on.
“It’s still really fresh. It’s still really hurting a lot of our family because we don’t have true answers – we don’t have a coroner’s inquest.”
Stephens’s family has been calling for an independent coroner’s inquest into his death. They still have questions they want answered and feel such a forum would shed light on many of their concerns and prevent similar deaths in the future.
“There’s just no closure still, that’s the hard part, I think, for everybody,” added Jannett Jones Stephens’s sister.
“Until we get the answers – there’s a lot of anger still.
“I want to get the answers, for myself, not to place blame on anybody, but just to know the facts of what transpired, and what’s going to stop it from happening again to the next person.”
The Journal Pioneer reached out to the Department of Justice and Public Safety Monday to inquire what the provincial coroner’s office has decided to do with regards to Stephens’s death. The office had previously said no decision as to whether to hold an inquiry would be made until after the Nova Scotia Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) completed its investigation into the case, which it did in March.
A representative for the department said the coroner’s office has an active file on this case, but no decision regarding an inquest has been made yet.
The SIRT investigation into the shooting took nearly nine months to complete.
The report concluded “the officer had the right to use lethal force against the suspect if it was reasonable to believe the suspect posed a risk of death or grievous bodily harm to him or others. In the circumstances, the risk was clear.”
According to the summary of the report, three officers chased Stephens into a darkened home during a scheduled power outage. They searched the home and found him in the basement.
The officers repeatedly ordered Stephens to surrender. A brief stand-off followed in which Stephen’s broke off a chair leg and threatened the officers. He also swung a golf club at one of them.
Officers managed to take Stephens into custody after shooting him several times. He was taken to Prince County Hospital but died there.
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