London police address sexual assault charges against five Canadian hockey players

The chief of police in London, Ont., apologized Monday to the woman at the centre of a sexual assault case against five members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team.

Thai Truong said he was sorry for how long it took to lay charges in the case, stemming from an incident in 2018.

“I want to extend on behalf of the London Police Service my sincerest apology to the victim (and) to her family for the amount of time that it has taken to reach this point,” Truong told reporters at a media conference. “This should not take this long. It shouldn’t take years and years.”

The probe was dropped in 2019, when Truong says officers determined there were “insufficient grounds” to lay charges.

Police reviewed that investigation in 2022, when Det. Sgt. Katherine Dann says officers found new evidence that police say helped lead to the charges.

“Upon review of the occurrence, it was determined that there were additional steps that could be taken to advance the investigation,” Dann said. “As a result, the investigation was reopened and a team of investigators were assigned.”

Truong said the officers who initially looked into the complaint in 2018 are no longer on the investigative team.

The probe was picked back up in 2022, and police charged Dillon Dube, Cal Foote, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart and Michael McLeod late last month.

Dann said a review committee has not probed why the case was dropped five years ago. She added the case was not referred to the Violence Against Women Advocate Case Review Committee when previous investigators deemed there weren’t sufficient grounds to lay the charges.

Now that the five players are facing charges, she says the committee will have to wait until the case makes its way through the courts before looking into it.

Dann told reporters that concurrent investigations “did add complexity” to her probe.

She declined to go into detail about why the NHL and Hockey Canada investigations made the police investigation harder.

Dube, Hart, Foote and Formenton are facing one charge each of sexual assault. McLeod is facing a charge of sexual assault and another of being a party to the offence.

“The one charge he is (facing) is in relation to his own actions,” Dann said. “The party to the offence charge is in relation to aiding someone else into committing the offence.”

None of the five players was in court Monday morning for the first hearing in the case, as lawyers for the players appeared via video.

The case was adjourned to April 30 following a brief hearing.

Dube (Calgary Flames), Hart (Philadelphia Flyers), Foote (New Jersey Devils) and McLeod (New Jersey) are on leave from their respective NHL teams. Formenton is on leave from the Swiss club for which he has been playing.

All five were members of the team that represented Canada at the 2018 world junior hockey championship in Buffalo, N.Y.

London police launched an investigation in 2022 after word got out that Hockey Canada had settled a lawsuit with a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by several members of the team after a gala held in that Ontario city in June of 2018.

— With files from The Canadian Press