An on-duty officer with the Northumberland Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) lost his life late Monday afternoon (April 27) after his motorcycle crashed on Highway 401 in Cobourg.
At around 5:30 p.m., officers with the Northumberland OPP responded to reports of a single-vehicle collision in the eastbound lanes of the provincial highway near Burnham Street North. An OPP officer was pronounced dead at the scene.
After withholding the officer’s name for several hours while next of kin were notified, the OPP later identified the officer as 33-year-old Sergeant Brandon Malcolm.
A former member of the Canadian Armed Forces who also served as an auxiliary member with the Toronto Police Service, Malcolm joined the OPP in June 2020 and served his entire career with the Northumberland OPP detachment.
Malcolm was a skilled member of the OPP’s Golden Helmets precision motorcycle team, which represents the OPP at events such as parades, festivals, and official functions.
OPP commissioner Thomas Carrique held a media conference late Monday evening on the investigation into the collision that claimed Malcolm’s life.
“Hearts are broken in the OPP right across this province,” Carrique said, later describing Malcolm as an officer who “was dedicated to duty, committed to the passion of policing, and extremely proud to be a member of our Golden Helmets.”
“I will be forever grateful to him for his service,” Carrique added. “He has been taken far too soon under such tragic circumstances. We owe him and his family a great deal of gratitude.”
While Carrique did not rule it out, he said there is no evidence at this stage of the investigation to indicate that any other vehicles were involved in the crash.
He noted there was a secondary collision in the westbound lanes of Highway 401 on Monday afternoon, after responding OPP officers rear-ended a vehicle that had stopped to render assistance to the fallen officer. That secondary collision resulted in minor injuries.
Highway 401 was closed in both directions between County Road 28 and Burnham Street in Cobourg until around 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday while police conducted an initial investigation and documented the scene.
The OPP is continuing to investigate the collision in conjunction with the Office of the Chief Coroner and the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service. Assistance is being provided by the OPP Traffic Management and Enforcement Team, as well as OPP Forensic Identification Services.
Anyone with any information or dashcam/video footage in relation to this collision is asked to contact the OPP at 1-888-310-1122 or submit an anonymous report by contacting Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or ontariocrimestoppers.ca.
