Nick Cake almost didn’t answer the phone when it rang at 6 a.m. last Friday. It was a client, someone the Sarnia-area lawyer had spoken with just days before. There was no apparent urgency.

Something made him pick up anyway. And Cake heard the calm voice of Samuel Maloney, 35, from London, Ont.

“He said, ‘Hi Nick, it’s Sam, the police are raiding my house,’” Cake told the Star Thursday.

Within seconds, Cake understood the volatility of the situation.

He says he heard Maloney’s wife screaming and an “authoritative male voice” instructing the man to show his hands. Cake says he, too, urged Maloney to obey.

“‘Put your hands up, they are going to shoot you.’ There were some f-bombs in there,” Cake says he told Maloney. “And Sam said ‘OK.’”

What followed, Cake says, was the sound of four shots — then nothing.

“I heard Sam. I heard gunshots. Then I didn’t hear Sam anymore.”

The province’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the civilian watchdog that probes deaths involving police in Ontario, is now probing Maloney’s death. According to Cake, Maloney was shot in the face.

In a press release issued on Dec. 23, the SIU said the incident occurred at a residence on Duchess Ave. in London — the home where Maloney lived with his wife and two kids, according to Cake.

The watchdog’s news release points to a heavy police presence at the home for the pre-dawn raid: three officers are the subjects of the investigation, and 18 others have been designated witness officers. At least one officer was injured, according to the SIU.

In a news conference hours after the shooting, London Police Service’s Deputy Chief Steve Williams said he could not provide any information about the interaction, saying the service is “prevented by legislation from discussing details of the matter” because the SIU is now investigating.

The London Free Press reported on Thursday that the officer who was injured was struck by a crossbow. The same day her husband was killed, Melissa Facciola, Maloney’s wife, was charged with one count of possession of a crossbow while under a prohibition order.

Facciola, who is currently nursing a six-month-old baby, was held for three days in solitary confinement before she was released Wednesday, Cake said.

Maloney did not mention anything to Cake about a crossbow while he was on the phone. Cake doesn’t know if Maloney had put him on speaker phone or if he was holding the phone at the time that he was shot.

After he heard the gunfire, Cake said he listened for another six or seven minutes, but heard nothing but the “general sound of people moving.” Hours later, he received a call from Maloney’s distraught wife.

Cake says Maloney was a “unique” man he met this summer, when Maloney was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer — charges still before the courts. Maloney previously faced criminal charges involving unsafe storage of firearms that were later withdrawn.

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Maloney “struggled with his own demons,” including possible struggles with mental illness, Cake said.

“I know he was a loving father, loved his wife. He was a spiritual man,” he said.

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca

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