Man told Sheppard Avenue bank staff he had a bomb

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The province's Special Investigations Unit has cleared a Toronto police officer in the March 25 non-fatal shooting of a bank robbery suspect in Scarborough.

The SIU said officers responded to an armed robbery in progress at the Royal Bank branch on Sheppard Avenue west of Markham Road at about 3 p.m.

Police had received information that a man told bank staff that he was armed with a bomb that was controlled by a hand-held remote device. Police took up position outside the bank to block the man as he left with cash and the apparent explosive device.

According to the SIU probe, the man ignored all commands to put down the device and advanced on one of the officers outside the main doors of the bank. The officer fired three shots in rapid succession, each hitting the man. The 50-year-old victime was taken by ambulance to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre with serious, but not life threatening, injuries.

The SIU assigned nine investigators to the case and designated one subject and 10 witness officers.

It was determined that the bomb was fake, consisting of a box inside a bag with a remote garage door opener passing as the trigger.

"As the incident unfolded, there would have been no way for the subject officer to have known that the bomb was not real," SIU director James Cornish said in a news release. "Given the information that the officer possessed, it would have been unwise for him to have assumed that the bomb was part of a hoax."

The SIU is a civilian agency that investigates whenever there is a serious injury, death or sexual assault involving police.