Hoss Lightning Saddleback’s kookum, Nadalie Saddleback, wants people to know her grandson was friendly and curious. She says he loved customized vehicles and told his kookum he was going to make one for her someday.
In the winter, she says Lightning Saddleback would clear an area on the creek at Samson Cree Nation near his kookum’s home and he and other kids would skate there.
In summer, Saddleback says her grandson loved to drive her garden tractor and ride his scooter.
“Whenever we had a chance we would go to the skatepark in Wetaskiwin,” Saddleback says. He was a tenderhearted kid, he was softhearted.”
Lightning Saddleback, 15, from Samson Cree Nation, was shot and killed by the RCMP in Wetaskiwin, Alta., on Aug. 30.
The community in both Wetaskiwin and Samson Cree Nation are still shaken.
According to Wetaskiwin RCMP, Lightning Saddleback called 911 and told a dispatcher he was being followed by people trying to kill him. About an hour later, police said officers found him with several weapons, which they confiscated.
Police said a confrontation then led to two officers shooting the boy, who later died in hospital.
Two hours before the shooting happened, Saddleback says her grandson was at her home. At some point, she says, he left. She didn’t know he had gone to Wetaskiwin.
Community activist, Stephanie Fleury says when the 15 year old was shot, he was likely looking for his mother.
Fleury says at times she lives with family members and often visits friends who are unhoused and live in a field near the edge of town – the same field where Lightning Saddleback was shot.
“Because he was in crisis and he was looking for his mum,” Fleury speculates. “I don’t think he was out to hurt anyone. He was scared, that’s why he called the police for help. Like, when does a call for help turn into you getting killed by the police that you called for help? It doesn’t make sense.”
Fleury says when the interaction with Lightning Saddleback happened, police had other options such as calling a crisis worker, something echoed by another local activist.
Roxanne Roan tells APTN News it’s still hard to believe the boy got shot after asking for help.
“I wish they would have called mobile health from Maskwacis to come and stop the interaction. I wish there was people out there to help with the crisis people are having. There’s nothing,” Roan says.
The fear left in the wake of the shooting hasn’t left Clarence Northwest. He was unhoused until this past spring but now has a home and custody of his young teenage son.
He says he was picked up by RCMP that night for a reason he didn’t specify and was in custody when he heard the news of the shooting on the radio.
“And it was a 15 year old boy and I was worried because I got picked up that night, and I thought it was my son and I couldn’t sleep at all,” he says.
Now, Northwest says he is doing what he can to keep his son safe, including telling him to stay at home.
“Stay home and play those games. I’ll pay for everything else, you play those games. Don’t even come out on the streets, because the streets around here are messed up,” says Northwest.
Terry Smallboy, another community member, says the RCMP had nothing to fear from a 15 year old boy.
“I feel as though it wasn’t about the RCMP feeling like they were being threatened,” Smallboy says. “They suffer an identity crisis more than our own people, I feel. Once they’re in uniform, there’s a completely different person in that uniform than there is outside that uniform.”
As for preventing something like this from happening again, Stephanie Fleury has some ideas.
“I think our rez needs our own tribal police. If RCMP are going to work with Native people, they need to have a crisis worker to talk between them. Because the police use excessive force,” she says.
Lightning Saddleback’s family is still dealing with their grief but they’re planning to join an Edmonton walk to bring awareness to his and other Indigenous people’s deaths by police on Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation when everyone is reminded that every child matters.
According to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, commonly called ASIRT, the shooting was captured on video from the RCMP cruisers. ASIRT is still investigating.
Saddleback Lightning is one of eight First Nations people to have been killed after interacting with the RCMP or city police forces across the country since Aug. 29 when Jack Piché was run over by a police cruiser at a highway crossroads in northwest Saskatchewan.
