Montreal reaches settlement with family of man killed by police in 2017, law firm says

The City of Montreal has reached a settlement with the family of Pierre Coriolan, a 58-year-old Black man who was shot by police in 2017.

The Montreal law firm, Arsenault Dufresne Wee Avocats, released a statement Wednesday, saying Coriolan's two sisters sued the city for damages and the case was set to go to court on May 12.

Now that a settlement has been reached, the statement says, the sisters "are satisfied with the agreement and will not comment on the file."

The statement does not provide further information about the settlement.

A report by Quebec's coroner's office on Coriolan's death, released in February, found that officers lack sufficient training to de-escalate and communicate, and they were relying on "outdated" and "obsolete" techniques.

On June 27, 2017, police respondedto 911 calls about a man in distress, yelling and smashing things in his apartment in the city's Gay Village.

Six police officers responded to the call. They latertestified at the coroner's inquest that they found Coriolan sitting on his couch, holding a knife and a screwdriver.

Officers testified that after yelling at Coriolan to "drop the knife," they shot him with a Taser and rubber bullets before firing three gunshots when he moved toward them.

A pathologist's report found Coriolan was shot three times and died from a hemorrhage in his abdomen. He also suffered blunt-force trauma.

In his 33-page report, coroner Luc Malouin found that the six officers who responded to the shooting "provoked a chain reaction" by the way they approached Coriolan and that key information that could have affected their response was not properly disseminated.