(JOHN MCDONALD / iNFOnews.ca)

The BC police watchdog has cleared Mounties of any wrongdoing after a Lumby man stabbed himself in the stomach during a tense stand-off last winter.

According to a Jan. 24 Independent Investigations Office of BC report, police attempted to Taser the man who had locked himself in his truck and said he didn't want to go to jail.

Police smashed the truck window and fired the Taser only to find the man had already stabbed himself. He was then taken to hospital.

The Independent Investigations Office of BC investigates all incidents where a person suffers serious harm regardless of whether there are accusations of police wrongdoing or not.

According to the report, the incident took place Jan. 3, 2024, on a rural road outside of Lumby.

The report said someone called the RCMP saying the man was sitting in his truck and blocking their driveway. There was a probation condition for him not to "loiter" in a parked vehicle.

When police arrived they told him he was under arrest for breaching his probation and to get out of the truck.

Instead, he told police he wouldn't go back to jail and drove 200 metres down the road to a dead end.

The man had called his spouse who arrived at the scene.

At one point he told her he loved her and was sorry.

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Police had previous experience with the man and viewed his behaviour as escalating and becoming increasingly violent.

"(An RCMP officer) said he had observed knives, machetes and loose firearm ammunition in (his) vehicle during the earlier arrest," the report read.

A member of the RCMP Integrated Crisis Response Team was at the scene, although a mental health nurse wasn't available.

Offices spent time talking to the man, but said the conversation was "circular" and he repeatedly said he wasn't going to jail.

He said he didn't want to hurt anybody else, just himself, and said he would be "dead before he left the vehicle" multiple times.

The man then realized police were putting a spike belt at the back of his truck.

"He put the truck in gear and accelerated away, stopping a short distance away at an angle across the gate at the end of the road. As the (man) was attempting to turn the truck around, (an officer) drove his police vehicle forward at low speed, contacting the front driver's side bumper of the truck and pushing it into the ditch," the report said.

The man appeared frantic as he tried and failed to get his truck out of the ditch.

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At this point, an officer smashed the truck window and fired a Taser at the man, although it missed. They then realized he had stabbed himself.

The man's spouse told watchdog investigators that she felt she could have talked him out of harming himself, but wasn't allowed to get close to the incident.

The police watchdog found there was no police wrongdoing in the case and the RCMP's swift actions may have prevented the man from harming himself more.

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