When Marianne MacIsaac looked up at a dark, dreary sky last Tuesday, she thought of her husband — a man who lay naked and dying on a street under the same sky one year ago.

“I shut my eyes and I said a prayer. I hung my head back down and thought, ‘How did we get here? How did we get to this catastrophic point?” she said at a vigil for her husband Sunday.

Michael MacIsaac was shot and killed by a Durham police officer on Dec. 2, 2013.

During what his family believes was an episode of delirium after an epileptic seizure, the 47-year-old fled his Ajax home and was running down the street, naked. He was holding a wrought-iron table leg when police arrived on scene.

An officer shot him twice.

In June, Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the province’s arm’s-length watchdog agency that probes incidents of serious injury or death involving police, cleared the officer responsible of wrongdoing.

On the one-year anniversary of his death, MacIsaac’s family is calling for the investigation to be reopened.

At a rally outside the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services in downtown Toronto Sunday, MacIsaac’s family said they filed a request for the SIU to reopen the case.

“This was not an impartial or unbiased investigation,” said Joanne MacIsaac, MacIsaac’s sister. “Our family has lost confidence in the Ontario policing system.”

The family conducted a private investigation over the past year, hiring private investigators and surveyors, and claims they have evidence that warrants a reopening.

The family says SIU failed to interview some witnesses, that details in the SIU report on how far Michael was standing from the police officers is incorrect and that he may have been falling when the second bullet hit him.

In a statement to the Star, the SIU said it sometimes reopens cases when new information is brought forward.

“The SIU is always willing to consider reopening its investigations in the event of new material information,” said SIU spokesperson Kaia Werbus. “There have been several SIU cases that have been reopened. One notable case that the director caused to reopen was that of Adam Nobody.”

Nobody was a G20 protester whose violent arrest — police struck him with batons — led a judge to convict Toronto police officer Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani of assault with a weapon in 2013.

Speaking to the Star, Joanne MacIsaac said she will be “very surprised” if the SIU agrees to meet with the family. Her lawyer, Roy Wellington, will contact the organization Monday, she said.

Wellington told the Star the family wants charges laid following a review, adding that the name of the officer is still being kept secret, in accordance with SIU policy.

At Sunday’s rally, MacIsaac’s family said they don’t hate the police but reforms of police training and protocols are badly needed, they said.

Among the 50 or so people who attended were families of other Ontarians killed by police. Sahar Bahadi, the mother of Toronto teen Sammy Yatim, killed by a Toronto police officer last year, stood quietly in the crowd. Const. James Forcillo is facing charges of second-degree murder and attempted murder in Yatim’s death.

In the United States, public outrage has reached a boiling point regarding police accountability. Nationwide protests broke out last month after a grand jury failed to indict a white police officer who killed Michael Brown, a black teen, in Ferguson, Mo.

“Why the gun? It seems in all of these cases this is the first choice they’re using is lethal force,” said Marianne MacIsaac. “My husband was not charging or attacking an officer. He was ill. He was naked in the middle of the driveway in December.”

For the future, she wants police to change how they handle people in crisis, but for now, she cries every morning and calls the past year “hell.”

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“It’s very hard,” she said. “I miss him terribly.”

A coroner’s inquest into the case is set to begin in fall 2015, said Joanne MacIsaac.

With files from Jennifer Pagliaro

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