A memorial pays tribute to Gina Goulet outside her residence in Shubenacadie, N.S., on May 14, 2020.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
On the morning she was killed, Gina Goulet told her daughter she was scared of a man who was on a murderous rampage across rural Nova Scotia. Minutes later, he began smashing in the glass on her side door.
Ms. Goulet had been following breaking news reports about the manhunt for Gabriel Wortman, a fellow denturist who had already killed 21 other people before he pulled up in a stolen SUV behind her home on April 19, 2020. Her final texts with her daughter, shared Wednesday through a public inquiry into the mass shooting, revealed she was concerned the gunman knew her address.
In the hour before she was shot, Ms. Goulet told her daughter to lock her doors and said she wasn’t surprised the killer would know how to build a replica RCMP car – something known by the police since the night before, but only shared publicly at 10:17 a.m. that morning.
Nova Scotia mass shooter smiled at passing RCMP before continuing rampage, inquiry hears
“He knows where I live ... I hope they catch him,” Ms. Goulet texted her daughter. “I’m nervous. I hope they start blocking the roads. … Like I said, he’s a smart man. Almost too smart.”
Ms. Goulet, a cancer survivor who had previously turned down a job offer from the gunman, was fatally shot while hiding in a bathroom at her home outside Shubenacadie, N.S. The gunman, who also shot one of her dogs, stole her grey Mazda 3, and shed pieces of his fake RCMP uniform as he left.
The inquiry heard the killer had driven past the woman’s home along a rural highway after killing RCMP Constable Heidi Stevenson and passerby Joey Webber just minutes earlier. He recognized her house, pulled a U-turn and drove back. Ms. Goulet was the final victim of the mass shooting, the deadliest in Canadian history.
According to a summary shared by the inquiry, Ms. Goulet tried to call her daughter Amelia Butler at 10:58 a.m., but when Ms. Butler answered, she didn’t hear her mother’s voice at the other end. Ms. Butler frantically called back 16 times before driving her mother’s house, where her husband found the body.
Within half an hour of Ms. Goulet’s murder, the gunman’s rampage would finally end: He was killed after stopping for fuel at an Irving gas station in Enfield, N.S. Minutes before, he had tried to buy gas at another station, where an RCMP officer pulled up beside but didn’t recognize him since he had changed his clothes.
The inquiry revealed the gunman shot himself in the temple when he was confronted by two RCMP tactical officers. He used an RCMP-issued handgun that he’d stolen from Constable Stevenson, who he had killed after a head-on collision earlier that morning.
Gina Goulet in an undated photo.Supplied
The two RCMP officers had also stopped for gas when one noticed the driver of the vehicle at the next pump was bleeding from the forehead. An autopsy later confirmed that injury was from a bullet fired by Constable Stevenson that grazed his forehead, the inquiry heard.
Constable Craig Hubley quickly recognized the driver as the gunman from photos police had circulated.
“Benny, it’s him,” he said to his partner, Constable Ben MacLeod.
Within seconds of getting out of their SUV, they unloaded 23 rounds into the stolen car the gunman was driving, shooting through the passenger window and front windshield. By the time police pulled the killer out of the vehicle and placed him in handcuffs, he was already dead.
Dr. Matthew Bowes, Chief Medical Examiner for Nova Scotia, told the inquiry the cause of death was multiple gunshots to his chest and stomach, which were fired by police. Under cross-examination from a lawyer for the victims’ families, he conceded the gunman would’ve “most likely” died from his self-inflicted gunshot wound alone, but said that would not necessarily be immediate.
Brian Sauvé, president of National Police Federation, the union for the RCMP’s rank-and-file members, said the evidence heard Wednesday shows that the actions of Constables Hubley and MacLeod saved many lives. The union has continued to push back against criticism over how the RCMP handled their response to the mass shooting and the manhunt.
“There has been much armchair and unfair criticism of what our members did or did not do during and beyond those 13 hours. We know that each member rose to the occasion, with the information available at the time, in an implausible and truly unthinkable situation, risking their lives to protect others in their communities,” Mr. Sauvé said in a statement.
Commission counsel Anna Mancini speaks in Halifax on April 13 at the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
The RCMP union also called on the medical examiner to address a report on the death of Heather O’Brien, one of the gunman’s victims who was killed on the second day of the attack. Ms. O’Brien’s family previously accused the RCMP of declaring her dead too quickly, and shared her Fitbit watch data that suggested her heart continued to beat for hours after she was shot.
In his testimony Wednesday, Dr. Bowes disputed the suggestion that the Fitbit was a reliable indicator Ms. O’Brien remained alive and could have been saved. He said her injuries from four gunshots would have caused death “rapidly and finally,” and she would not have recovered.
Wednesday’s hearing ended with submissions from lawyers of victims’ families. Joshua Bryson, a lawyer for relatives of Joy and Peter Bond, told the inquiry the “trauma informed” approach adopted by the inquiry was being used to curtail witness testimony, making it difficult for the commission to fulfill its mandate.
He slammed the RCMP’s response to the mass shooting as disorganized and stumbling, including unexplained delays in broadcasting 911 calls to officers in the field and dispatching police to murder scenes.
“These are lifetimes in a mass casualty event,” Mr. Bryson said. “These delays are simply unacceptable.”
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