Family and friends of a man shot dead minutes after he attacked a pool-hall operator with a hatchet say Hamilton police should not have killed him.
Soun Saing, 46, was shot during a confrontation with police on Good Friday.
"Why did they have to shoot him to die? Why didn't they shoot him in the hand? " asked his brother-in-law Sam Oeur.
"I'm not angry with police but it is not fair."
His frustration over Mr. Soun Saing's death was echoed by other relatives and friends still reeling from the loss of the father of two, described as a quiet and religious man who moved to Canada as a refugee from Cambodia in the late 1980s.
Mr. Soun Saing, who was unemployed, lived with his wife and teenage children in a third-floor apartment above the pool hall.
Minutes before Friday's shooting, Mr. Soun Saing walked into the empty pool hall and approached operator Gord Tekatch.
Mr. Tekatch, who said he'd never met the man and didn't know he lived upstairs, had seen him enter the hall twice before in recent weeks.
Mr. Soun Saing pulled a hatchet and rushed the counter swinging the weapon. He struck his 62-year-old victim a few glancing blows, then stopped suddenly and recoiled when he saw blood streaming down Mr. Tekatch's face from a cut on his forehead.
Mr. Tekatch picked up the phone to call police and Mr. Soun Saing turned around and walked down the stairs to the street below.
Six officers responded to the scene and found Mr. Soun Saing standing outside. Two of them fired multiple shots in the confrontation that followed.
Hamilton Police Chief Brian Mullan would not comment on whether the shooting -- the first fatal one by the city's police in more than two decades -- was warranted.
"That's one of the things that the SIU investigation will determine," he said. "That's exactly why they're called."
He said that as long as the Special Investigations Unit is involved, he is not permitted to discuss the shooting at all.
SIU spokesman Rose Bliss said the unit, which investigates all deaths and serious injuries involving police and civilians, is still in its fact-finding stage.