A week-long inquest began Tuesday into the 2018 death of a man who shot himself in the head at the Departure Bay ferry terminal just as police aimed several shots at his chest.
Jer Wood died on his 39th birthday, May 8, 2018, said his mother, Sharon Smallwood, who was the first to testify at the inquest at the Nanaimo courthouse.
At the time of his death, Wood was being sought in connection with a carjacking in Penticton and a shooting in the Vernon area.
Officers from the Nanaimo RCMP and the Island District Emergency Response Team were positioned to intercept him as he drove off the ferry at Departure Bay.
Two officers shot at him as he raised a pistol to his head, the Independent Investigations Office, B.C.’s police-watchdog agency, later determined.
His mother said Jer Wood was born Jerry Robert Smallwood, a name he was proud of, but unbeknownst to his loved ones, he changed it.
They didn’t find out about the name change until his body was released to the funeral home, she said.
She said she believes the change was to shield his loved ones from his drug addiction, which he developed after he was taken off painkillers following a work-related back injury at a camp where he was employed as a cook, about two and a half years before his death.
He became addicted to street drugs that contained fentanyl and methamphetamine, she said.
“He stayed away so that we wouldn’t know and we thought: ‘OK, he’s getting on with things,’ ” Smallwood said. “But he was hiding what was happening because he didn’t want us to know, because I’m sure he thought we would be disappointed in him.”
That wouldn’t have been the case, she said.
“If we had known what the symptoms were we would have done anything in our power to help him,” Smallwood said. “In hindsight, we saw some of the symptoms but didn’t pick up on them at the time.”
Those included a change in his personality, which was accompanied by frustration and depression from the pain, she said. She said he was also stressed from trying to reach a settlement with WorkSafeBC.
Smallwood said her son fled to Nanaimo from the Okanagan just before his death after the non-fatal shooting of one of the drug dealers who had been supplying him with street drugs.
“I guess he knew his life was ending — he couldn’t get off the drugs and he went after the drug dealers with a gun,” Smallwood said.
His girlfriend, Danielle Frost, testified that Wood stayed the night with her on May 6, 2018 and said he was going to deal with a person “who was doing something that they couldn’t get away with doing.”
He said that he was not going to go to jail afterward “and that the police would have to shoot him,” she said.
She said she assumed the issue was drug-related.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she said. “I didn’t know if I should take him serious or not.”
He left the next day without saying goodbye, then called later to say he had shot somebody, Frost said.
She said she was shocked and didn’t contact police.
“I know where I went wrong on that,” she said. “I didn’t know he was going to go to the Island and do what he did.”
Wood had rifles for hunting but she did not know he had a handgun that he would eventually use to take his own life, Frost said.
She also saw what she thought was a bulletproof vest but didn’t confront him, she said.
Penticton RCMP Staff Sgt. Scott Hanry, who helped to investigate the case, testified that Frost told him that Wood had developed an addiction to heroin because of his pain and was “tired of the struggle.” She said he had talked about killing himself, he said.
Frost said Wood told her he didn’t do drugs to get high, but to take the pain away.
Smallwood said her son is deeply missed. “We miss our son every day in our hearts, our home and our lives,” she said. “If only we could go back and change the outcome of his actions, we would give him one more hug and all our love. He is remembered by his friends as an amazing man, a charming, magnetic and caring person.”
