Police watchdog says officer acted in self-defence in shooting death of Eric Nothing

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) says it has found no reasonable grounds to believe a Nishnawbe Aski Police Service (NAPS) officer committed a criminal offence in connection with the death of a 40-year-old man in Deer Lake First Nation this past summer. The SIU says it was called in following the incident on July 22. Officers went to the residence in Deer Lake First Nation, 580 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay, to take the man into custody on the strength of two arrest warrants. According to the SIU, the man grabbed two knifes and refused to drop them and kept going in and out of the home. The man, later identified to APTN News as Eric Nothing, eventually emerged from the home with two knives and his shirt on fire and ran towards a NAPS officer. The officer fired five shots. He collapsed and was pronounced deceased at the nursing station. Nothing’s death came nearly one year after his father, Bruce Frogg, 57, was shot and killed by an Ontario Provincial Police Office in at Anicinabe Park in Kenora, Ont., On June 25, 2024. The SIU report into Frogg’s death, released July 2, 2025, “found no reasonable grounds to believe an Ontario Provincial Police officer committed a criminal offence in connection with the death” of Frogg. During the SIU investigation into the death of Nothing, evidence collected included interviews with police, non-police witnesses, and video evidence that captured the incident in part. NAPS officers were there two arrest Nothing for two warrants, including assault with a weapon and the other for failing to comply with a court order and for domestic assault involving his partner. At the time of the incident, police said Nothing’s ex-girlfriend was in the house with kids, along with another person and three other children. SIU director Joseph Martino, in his decision, said he was satisfied the officer’s “gunfire constituted reasonable force in self-defence.” Martino wrote, “the evidence suggests he was determined to avoid going to jail. He also harboured ill will towards the police for the death of a relative in the course of an incident with police, and had apparently talked about provoking a similar confrontation with police by threatening them with a knife. The Complainant seems to have put that plan in action when he advanced quickly down the porch ramp, holding knives with his shirt on fire.” Martino, in his analysis, found there were opportunities earlier in the engagement where officers might have used their conducted energy weapons but was “unable to fault the officers for choosing instead to continue with their efforts to de-escalate the situation through verbal communication,” wrote Martino. “As for withdrawal or retreat, these were not viable options given the presence of women and children in the house, whose safety would have been on the minds of the officers.” The SIU investigation in now concluded. Continue Reading