A retired Barrie police officer has been granted an absolute discharge following his earlier guilty plea to careless use of a firearm in connection with the 2018 shooting of a fleeing suspect.
“In the unique circumstances of this case, I accept the joint submission that was the product of extensive discussion between counsel informed by expert information,” Justice Michelle Fuerst of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice announced on Thursday.
Fuerst described Michael Chytuk as having an exemplary service record through his 30-year career prior to his recent retirement.
Chytuk was a Barrie police sergeant running a roadside check stop on Sept. 17, 2018, when he responded to a call for the search of robbery suspects seen fleeing from the Duckworth Plaza in the city’s east end.
Fuerst found that Chytuk "unintentionally triggered" his semi-automatic Glock firearm, injuring a passenger in a getaway car. Chytuk was originally charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm following an investigation by the Special Investigations Unit (SIU).
“We’re very pleased that the judge acceded to our request,” said Chytuk’s lawyer, David Butt. “Independently and objectively, it was the right thing to do to grant retired sergeant Chytuk an absolute discharge.
“He’s free to live his life as if he had never been charged. Nothing remains for him to do but move on.”
While there was a guilty finding, Butt said the effect of an absolute discharge is that there's no conviction or penalty.
An absolute discharge, he added, allows the court to acknowledge that he did cross the line, but it requires no penalty.
“It’s very rarely used. But it is an opportunity for the law to say: ‘We recognize the difference between law and common sense. And legally, yes, you’ve technically breached the statute, but from a common sense point of view you were faced with a huge situation of very serious danger and you didn’t even intend to do what you did'.”
Butt said Chytuk can now happily go into retirement — which he said was unconnected to this event — and put it all behind him.
The case revolved around two men and two teenage girls who drove to Barrie in a Honda Civic stolen earlier in Toronto. The girls agreed to meet two men in an east-end Barrie park where one managed to steal one of the men’s wallets.
They fled, spraying one of two men with pepper spray, and reunited with the two men — Tuqor Jones, then 21 years old, and Ashtoney Thompson, who was 20 — who were waiting in the Honda.
The robbery, along with a partial licence plate, was reported to police.
The four drove to a St. Vincent Street gas station to fill up using a credit card from the stolen wallet when Chytuk arrived in his marked SUV police vehicle, stopping in front of the Honda on an angle and getting out just after one of the girls repeatedly called out ‘cops!’.
“The avenue of egress for the Honda was narrow,” but enough for it to squeeze between the police vehicle and disposal bins, said Fuerst, reading from her decision. “Officer Chytuk had to move out of its path to avoid it. His left hand contacted the front driver’s side of the Honda… and he pushed back from the car, stumbling back towards his open vehicle door.”
She found that the officer then unintentionally pulled the trigger of his gun.
The bullet went through the top of the Honda’s trunk and into the back seat where Thompson was sitting. With Jones at the wheel, the car sped off, crashing into a tree at a park about a kilometre and a half away at the bottom of St. Vincent Street.
The occupants all fled on foot and were captured, with the exception of Thompson, who eventually found his way back to Toronto, court heard.
Thompson was arrested by Toronto police on Oct. 10, three weeks later on unrelated charges with the police bullet still lodged in his shoulder. It was removed during surgery on Nov. 29 while he was in custody.
Thompson later pleaded guilty to theft of a motor vehicle and was handed a conditional discharge along with 12 months’ probation.
The driver, Tuqur Jones, pleaded guilty in June to possession of a stolen car and dangerous driving and handed a conditional discharge and two years' probation and a driving prohibition.
Chytuk retired on July 31, 2021, and is no longer a serving member of the city’s service.
