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Two London police officers fatally shot a knife-wielding man after he stabbed his girlfriend and another person and advanced on them, Ontario’s police watchdog said.

The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) published a report on Friday in which two London police officers clear of any wrongdoing in fatal encounter with Kuhkpaw Moo18, on July 16.

Moo stabbed his girlfriend and another person inside the home on Wellesley Crescent, northwest of Veterans Memorial Parkway and Trafalgar Street, around 11 p.m., the SIU said.

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Officers forced their way into the home and were directed upstairs by a person. Upstairs, with guns drawn, officers encountered a man who had been stabbed. He directed them to a bedroom, where they found a woman who had been stabbed and a man holding a knife covered in blood, the SIU said.

Officers told the man to drop the knife, but he advanced toward them before one officer fired a single shot and the other fired three shots at the attacker, who was ten feet away, the SIU said.

One officer checked on the injured woman, who was still breathing, while the other officer disarmed the attacker and placed him in handcuffs, the SIU said.

The woman – later identified by London police as Breanna Broadfoot17 – and the attacker died in hospital.

SIU Director Joseph Martino determined that both officers used “reasonable defensive force” to protect themselves and others.

“Aware of information indicating that two people were stabbed and the perpetrator . . . was still in the home, the officers had a duty to respond to the address to do everything they reasonably could to prevent further injury and protect life,” Martino wrote in his report.

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The officers did not have the option of retreating from the advancing attacker, Martino said, citing the other people in the home and the “danger of serious bodily injury or death.”

“What was required under the circumstances was the immediate stopping power of a firearm,” Martino wrote.

Both officers declined to give interviews to SIU investigators, as is their legal right. One officer provided a copy of his notes, while the other gave a written statement, the SIU said.

Neither the police nor the SIU report named the killer.

But court documents identified him as Kuhkpaw Moo, who was under a court order to stay away from Broadfoot after he was charged with assault and battery by choking in an alleged attack on her five months earlier.

The death of Broadfoot, a pupil at Sir Frederick Banting Secondary School who aspired to become a child psychologist, has drawn calls for more action against femicide, the killing of women and girls because of their sex. Hundreds of people, including London’s police chief and local politicians, attended a vigilwhere her brother urged everyone to do more to stop intimate partner violence.

Moo’s death is the fourth fatal police-involved shooting in London in the past decade. The SIU has cleared all officers involved in past incidents of any wrongdoing.

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