Man with gun shot by Halifax police officer, taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries

A man was rushed to hospital with what were thought to be life-threatening injuries after he was shot by a Halifax Regional Police officer Thursday night.

Police were in the 100 block of Plateau Crescent in the city’s Clayton Park area, looking for a man they believed was involved in a stabbing earlier that night, police said in a news release.

“As officers approached the man, he pointed a firearm towards the officer, following which the officer discharged their service weapon,” the release said.

The shooting was referred to Nova Scotia Serious Incident Response Team, the province’s independent police watchdog.

A release from SiRT said one officer fired his weapon at the man. Director Alonzo Wringht said late Friday that the man’s condition had not worsened since he arrived in hospital.

Plateau Crescent was closed around the time of the incident but has since reopened. A section of the 200 block of Willett Street, about a kilometre away, was also closed. That was the scene of the stabbing  that police were investigating before the shooting, Const. John MacLeod. He said the road there has also been reopened, but police are still working at the scene. That investigation will remain a Halifax police file.

Plateau Crescent is home to a mix of lage apartment complexes, duplexes and single family homes, as well as Clayton Park Junior HIgh School. The road runs between Glenforest and Clayton Park drives.

MacLeod said late Friday afternoon he didn’t have any details on the investigation into the stabbing itself or an update on the condition of the victim.

Earlier this week, SIRT cleared a Halifax police officer who fatally shot a man, 59, in Dartmouth last August who police said was pointing a shotgun, ruling the action was necessary to protect the lives of police on the scene as well as the public.

In another police shooting this year, a man who police say confronted them with a weapon was killed in the area of a sports field near Micmac Boulevard and Woodland Avenue in Dartmouth. It wasn’t made clear at the time how many officers fired at the man or what sort of weapon he had.