When news broke of Sgt. Ryan Russell’s death on Wednesday, the widow of another fallen officer was catapulted back to the night her husband was killed in the line of duty.
More than 30 years ago, on March 14, 1980, burglar Craig Munro shot Const. Michael Sweet after police responded to a robbery in progress at a Queen Street West tavern.
Sweet could have survived had he received medical help, but Munro and his brother, Jamie, held him hostage for 90 minutes while he bled. By the time officers stormed the restaurant and rushed the 30-year-old officer to hospital, it was too late.
He left behind a wife, Karen Fraser, and three young daughters, Jennifer, Nicole and Kim.
“Anytime anything happens to another police officer, you’re right back there again, imagining it, thinking it all, feeling it all, every single time,” Fraser said.
Craig Munro was found guilty of first-degree murder, serving a life sentence in B.C. But last year, to the Sweet family’s dismay, he was granted unsupervised day parole.
“Craig Munro says he’s a changed man, and apparently we’re supposed to believe it,” Fraser said. “But you don’t – I don’t. Nobody does. You see the body language. It’s tight. It’s tense. If I say something in my victim impact statement that he doesn’t like, you see the movements and the crossing of his hands. You see that there’s still anger there. He’s a dangerous man. I swear he’s a dangerous man.”
Fraser says Craig Munro has never apologized for taking her husband’s life. Her family is pushing for changes to Canada’s parole system.
Although it will be tough, Fraser hopes Sgt. Russell’s wife, Christine, will attend the trial of Richard Kachkar, the man accused of killing her husband. Fraser says it will help bring closure to a shattering event.
“Everything changes,” Fraser said. “The life that you had changes. You just don’t ever have that life quite back the way it was. They say that all wounds heal, and they do. But wounds heal with scars, so you’re always left very scarred after something like that.”