Man charged with weapons and assault offences after waving knife at VPD
Posted March 21, 2024 8:31 pm.
Last Updated March 21, 2024 8:45 pm.
Police say a man has been charged with weapons and assault offences after waving a knife at Vancouver police officers Wednesday morning.
VPD officers responded to a report of a man waving a kitchen knife near the corner of Clark Drive and East Hastings Street around 11:30 a.m.
When VPD officers reached the scene, the man stepped onto the street and came at the officers, refused to drop the knife, and continued advancing towards them.
“Our officers fired multiple rounds from a less-lethal shotgun, and deployed a taser during the arrest,” says Sergeant Steve Addison.
“The suspect was taken to hospital as a precaution, but has since been discharged and is now in jail.”
Chief Const. Adam Palmer says it was a bone-chilling event.
“Showing some of the real stressors, and challenging and dangerous situations that our officers face every day in the city,” he said.
An employee at a local business tells CityNews he saw the whole incident unfold. He said he saw a man running with a knife down Hastings, and two police cars pulled up.
“I saw two cop cars here and they’re going, ‘bang, bang, bang!’ And I’m like oh man, and the guy didn’t even flinch. And then he came running after them, and then another police came running… and they’re still shooting at him because he wouldn’t back down. Then he fell to the ground.”
The man drops the knife, only to pick it up again. He continued moving towards the officers before he dropped to the ground, where police proceeded to arrest him.
The arrest was captured on a passing driver’s dash-cam video.
Palmer says 36-year-old Abolfazi Maini has been charged with weapons and assault offences and is currently in custody.
“He’s definitely not somebody on our radar – at all. Very few dealings with police anywhere – so he’s not somebody who’s on our radar, more peripheral-type stuff. However, there are some mental health issues at play,” Palmer said.
Amini remains in custody until his next court appearance.
Mayor Ken Sim, who ran on a campaign promise of hiring 100 cops and 100 mental health nurses — acknowledged there’s still work to do to hire the nurses at a media event Thursday.
“While we haven’t hit the hiring numbers yet, let’s talk about effectiveness. We do have a person in the command centre triaging calls, and I forget the number, but we’ve rerouted a lot of calls that would have been police calls, and maybe not the right response – and we’ve triaged them to a better outcome,” he said.
Palmer says around eight calls a day are rerouted to different responders who aren’t police officers, but says some situations will always need a police response.
“You cannot send a psychiatric nurse, or a social worker with a clipboard, to deal with someone who is waving around a knife,” he said.
With files from Kier Junos.