Lawyer Roger Burrill, part of the presenting counsel team, releases details at the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia on April 18/19, 2020, in Halifax on Feb. 28.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
Jamie Blair’s terrified call came in to the 911 dispatch centre in Truro, N.S., just after 10 p.m. on April 18, 2020. Her husband, Greg Blair, was lying on the deck, fatally shot by their neighbour. And now that same man, who had driven to their house in a fake RCMP cruiser, was trying to force his way inside.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on … like there’s a police car in the fucking driveway,” she told the 911 call-taker. “It’s decked and labelled RCMP … [inaudible] … but it’s not a police officer.”
Ms. Blair’s final moments alive, documented in the transcripts of her 911 call, were released for the first time Monday as part of the public inquiry into the Nova Scotia mass shooting. Along with never-before-seen statements to police from many of her neighbours, phone records and other interviews, they describe the early hours of a horrific series of killings that began in the rural community of Portapique and spread across central Nova Scotia.
The transcripts confirm that 911 dispatchers and the Nova Scotia RCMP knew at least 12 hours before the public was informed that a well-armed gunman named Gabriel Wortman was driving a lookalike RCMP vehicle, complete with identical decals and lights. The 51-year-old denturist, who was also dressed as a police officer, would go on to kill 22 people in his rampage – the worst in Canadian history.
These new records, compiled in the first major document released by the inquiry, describe how Mr. Wortman forced his way into the Blair home on that Saturday night, shooting and killing the family dog and cat. He then began shooting through the bedroom door that Ms. Blair was hiding behind. Screams could be heard through the phone, according to the transcripts.
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Ms. Blair’s two sons, 12 and 10, were hiding behind their mother’s bed and weren’t seen by their neighbour. On his way out the door, Mr. Wortman pulled burning logs out of the wood stove, scattered them around the floor and turned on the gas on the kitchen stove. After he left, the boys escaped and ran next door, where they found two other children whose mother, Lisa McCully, had also been killed.
Ms. Blair, who identified the shooter as Mr. Wortman, was the first to tell a 911 operator that her neighbour was driving a fake police car, and she wasn’t the last. Her eldest son told another 911 operator about 15 minutes later that his neighbour was driving a vehicle that looked “just like … a police car.”
“The children indicated the perpetrator would blend in ‘because he has a cop car,’” the transcripts read.
Two other neighbours, Andrew and Kate MacDonald, were nearly killed that Saturday night by Mr. Wortman when he pulled up beside them on the road after they’d gone out to check on a fire at a nearby home. They also told police that the gunman was driving what looked like an RCMP vehicle – and that he’d pointed a handgun with a laser-emitting sight and fired twice into their vehicle.
“It’s my neighbour Gabe, he just shot me in the arm,” Mr. MacDonald told a 911 operator at 10:27 p.m., after another bullet grazed his head. He repeated his story about the lookalike police cruiser at 5 a.m. the next day when he was interviewed by an RCMP officer after being released from hospital.
The joint provincial-federal public inquiry, which must submit a final report in November with recommendations on how to prevent similar tragedies, is focused on what police knew and when because it’s one of the central questions of the case. The transcripts show the RCMP withheld for 12 crucial hours information that the gunman was driving a real-looking police vehicle.
When they finally informed the public the next morning, at 10:17 a.m., the RCMP used Twitter, and not the province’s emergency alert system which sends messages directly to people’s phones. Mr. Wortman killed another six people after leaving Portapique before the information about the police car was revealed.
Emily Hill, senior legal counsel for the Mass Casualty Commission, said on Monday that questions around how police communicated with the public during the mass shooting and manhunt will be addressed at later stage in the inquiry. The commission will hold public hearings over the next two months, before producing an interim report in May and a final report in November.
“Those questions, about the how and the why this mass casualty event unfolded, are really at the heart of the commission’s work,” she told reporters. “But we need to start with understanding the facts as best we can.”
After he left Portapique, one of the gunman’s victims was slain at the side of the road while walking her dog on the morning of April 19; another was on her way to work. Some victims were targeted by Mr. Wortman, who drove to their homes and killed them. After police told the public he was driving a fake RCMP vehicle, the gunman killed three more, including an RCMP officer, before he was finally stopped, at a gas station outside of Halifax.
Just after 11:30 p.m. on April 18, the Nova Scotia RCMP sent their first tweet, telling people they were responding to a firearms complaint in Portapique, asking them to avoid the area and to stay in their homes with the doors locked. But by that point, the gunman had already left, most likely driving away in his fake RCMP car using a private road through a blueberry field, according to witness interviews with police.
After he slipped away, the nightmare continued in Portapique. The Blair and McCully children hid in a basement, waiting for a sign the real police were outside. An RCMP officer told the children they would use the code word “pineapple” so they would know it was safe to come out.
Another neighbour, Clinton Ellison, was hiding in the woods after he stumbled on the body of his brother, Corrie Ellison. He said he saw men with flashlights after his gruesome discovery, and not knowing they were police, was afraid they might be the killers. The RCMP say they later found Corrie’s DNA on the killer’s boots after he was gunned down at a gas station in Enfield, N.S.
The gunman’s common-law spouse, Lisa Banfield, also spent the night hiding in the woods, and didn’t come out until 6:28 a.m. She told police Mr. Wortman had snapped after an argument the previous evening over plans for a “commitment ceremony.” He tied her up with a bathrobe belt, doused their cottage with gasoline, threatened to kill her, handcuffed her and placed her in the back of his fake police cruiser, she told police.
She said she escaped by slipping through the “silent patrolman” panel that divides the front and back seats. Nearly three hours before the RCMP alerted the public that a gunman who looked like a real police officer was on the loose in Nova Scotia, Ms. Banfield became yet another person to confirm Mr. Wortman was driving a lookalike RCMP vehicle.
At 7:22 a.m., she advised them that the perpetrator was driving a vehicle that “looks identical to your police cars,” according to the document.
The inquiry continues Tuesday.
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