Alberta's police watchdog has cleared an officer of any wrongdoing after he shot and killed a man who was sitting in a parked SUV in Gleichen in 2017.

The early morning incident happened on Oct. 19, 2017, in the southern Alberta hamlet about 75 kilometres east of Calgary.

At 3:40 a.m., RCMP officers in two marked police vehicles out on patrol spotted a blue Ford Explorer parked facing northbound in the southbound lane of Haskayne Avenue, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team stated in an emailed release on Tuesday.