Officer, suspect died: No fault found with Edmonton police in lethal encounter
By The Canadian Press
EDMONTON – An investigative agency has found no fault with Edmonton police during an attempted arrest that led to the death of an officer and a suspect accused of criminal harassment.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team was directed to investigate what happened when four officers went to the home of Norman Walter Raddatz in June 2015.
The officers had gone to his house in west Edmonton to arrest Raddatz, who was being accused by a neighbour of posting anti-Semitic comments and hate-filled messages online.
Raddatz wouldn’t let the officers in and when they tried to use a battering ram to enter the home, he shot at them through the door several times.
Const. Daniel Woodall was killed and another officer was seriously injured.
Raddatz was later discovered to have shot himself in the head after he set the house on fire with a homemade bomb.
The investigation found that officers did nothing wrong in how they handled the situation.
“It is beyond question that all the officers were lawfully placed and engaged in the lawful execution of their duties,” ASIRT said in a release Tuesday. “There is no evidence or even reasonable suspicion to believe that the officers did anything wrong that day that caused or contributed to the death of Raddatz.”
Woodall, who was 35, had been with the Edmonton Police Service since he moved to the city from Manchester, England in 2007.
His widow and two young sons eventually returned to Britain.
Raddatz, who was 42, was divorced and living alone. He had six convictions for bylaw offences in the three months before he killed himself.
