The Special Investigations Unit has found three Peel Police officers were justified in firing weapons during a violent incident in Mississauga that left one person dead and two officers injured.

A news release late Wednesday that police behaviour in the March 20 incident at Queen Frederica Drive — which saw a 22-year-old man killed, a bystander hit by a stray bullet and one officer inadvertently shooting another — was “legally justified,” according to SIU director Tony Loparco.

Responding to a complaint, police were confronted by a man wielding a kitchen knife with a six-inch blade. The man resisted arrest and ended up on the ground after a violent struggle. Two officers were wounded with a knife during the scuffle.

According to the SIU, as this was happening, the man’s mother came outside and struck one of the officers on the head with a metal pot. At that time, the son slipped free and fled while officers restrained the women.

The man returned, wielding a knife in his right hand, and screamed for officers to let his mother go.

Officers drew their firearms and ordered the man to stop. When he didn’t, three officers fired their weapons. A total of 19 bullets were fired in succession and the son was struck 11 times. Marc Ekamba-Boekwa was later pronounced dead.

Nearby resident Suzan Zreik, was inadvertently wounded when one of the bullets entered her kitchen window and lodged in her back. Loparco found “no grounds to charge” any officers in that incident, nor in the bruises caused when a female officer’s bulletproof vest was shot by a colleague. The two women were, Loparco said, “in the wrong place at the wrong time through no criminal fault of anyone else.”

Reached late Wednesday, Zreik's lawyer Michael Moon said he found the verdict “completely disgusting.

“The fact that (Loparco) was so dismissive of what happened, saying they were simply the wrong place at the wrong time. Ms. Zreik wasn't in the wrong place, she was in her house.”

Marc Ekamba-Boekwa’s mother, Boketsu Boekwa, 50, was charged with two counts of conspiring to commit murder on a police officer and neighbour, assault with a weapon and uttering threats in the aftermath of the incident.

The SIU is called whenever police are involved in incidents that lead to serious injury or death or when officers are accused of sexual assault.

With files from Sarah-Joyce Battersby