The jury at the coroner's inquest into the death of an Elmvale man five years ago is now considering recommendations.

After five weeks, testimony has wrapped up.

Evelyn Minty has been waiting years for clarity, but she says the inquest into the death of her son Douglas Minty hasn't been helpful.

“No it's not a closure, because we never got the answers we wanted,” she says. “No it's not a closure.”

It hasn’t been easy for Evelyn Minty to be at the inquest and hear the testimony.

“I was so weak and had a temperature and a cold, but I just had to be at it,” she says. “It was important to me because we loved Doug. Doug was very much a part of our lives…”

Douglas Minty was 59 years old when he was shot by a police officer in 2009. He was developmentally delayed. Today the officer who shot minty finished giving his testimony.

Const. Jeff Seguin gave his testimony over multiple days, and on May 30 told court why he shot Minty five times that night.

Seguin said Minty came towards him with an open knife and that he was slashing it in the air.

Seguin told the inquest he “ran out of space” between him and Minty and that's why he fired his gun.

“I fired five shots because four wasn’t enough," said Seguin on the stand May 30. "Five was sufficient and six would have been too many.”

His lawyer says Seguin has finally been able to publicly give his version of events.

“He was able to finally, after five years of living through this … answer all the questions,” says Andrew McKay. “He's been wanting to do this for five long years.”

Now, after five weeks of testimony and evidence, the jury will consider everything they’ve seen and heard. They also have a chance to make recommendations.

READ MORE

Today lawyers made their suggestions about what the jury could consider proposing. One idea was to create a volunteer registry of vulnerable persons that police officers would have access to.

“In relation to the database I think that has some great interest for Const. Seguin and other officers to say the more information the better,” says McKay.

The Minty family’s lawyer also proposed that the OPP commission an independent civilian review of police use-of-force training with respect to encounters involving “edged weapons”. 

McKay didn’t agree with that proposal, however.

“To have people who do not have expertise being part of analyzing things after the fact - it's better that we have experts who deal with this over a great number of years and deal with these types of events,” he says.

Whatever the jury decides, the family just wants to be sure something like this never happens again. Douglas Minty’s brother John says it has been a constant battle, but the family hopes some good comes of it.

“I hope there's some good that's going to come out,” he says. “I think the recommendations, if they're adopted, can make things better in the future.”

While the jury may make recommendations, it’s not a legal requirement. All that's technically required at this coroner's inquest is that they come to an agreement about the facts the night Douglas Minty died.

The inquest reconvenes June 19 in Barrie.