Two RCMP officers observe a moment of silence to honour slain Const. Heidi Stevenson and the other 21 victims of the mass killings at a checkpoint on Portapique Road in Portapique, N.S., on April 24, 2020.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
Nova Scotia RCMP Corporal Rodney Peterson was racing to a homicide on the morning of April 19, 2020, when he passed a white Ford Taurus with the same police markings as his. The driver of that car was dressed as a Mountie and going slowly – but the way he looked at Cpl. Peterson seemed out of place.
The man “smiled as he went by,” the corporal told other RCMP officers, over his car radio.
The brief encounter between the real police officer and a gunman pretending to be one was revealed Thursday at the public inquiry into the Nova Scotia mass shooting. It came during a tense search by the RCMP across a wide rural area in central Nova Scotia, shortly after police realized the killer had escaped their grasp and had continued his murderous rampage. By the time it was over, the RCMP imposter would kill 22 people – the deadliest mass killing in Canadian history.
The description of the smiling man in the fake police car prompted another officer to say, “That’s him. That’s got to be him.” The inquiry heard Cpl. Peterson hesitated briefly about whether to give chase, and by the time he did, the gunman was gone.
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“I’m trying to decide, should I stop, slow down, talk to this person, or keep going,” Cpl. Peterson would recall in an interview with the public inquiry’s lawyers.
“So, I said, ‘If I stop and this is the bad guy, I’m going to get shot here, I’m going to get killed. If I continue on, that will give me a chance to turn around and pursue him, or to do something,’” he told the interviewer.
Prior to spotting the gunman, the corporal was headed to the roadside scene in Wentworth, N.S., where Lillian Campbell, the killer’s 16th victim, had been murdered that morning.
Less than 90 seconds after passing Cpl. Peterson, the gunman left the highway and went to the home of Adam and Carol Fisher. With a rifle in his hand, he began banging on their door and ringing their doorbell. The Fishers, who knew the killer, refused to answer the door and hid inside.
Mr. Fisher grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun, loaded it and braced himself in case the gunman forced his way in, while his wife called 911. He told the 911 operator that if the shooter came up to the house, he would blow his head off.
The Fishers had both seen a warning on social media identifying the gunman as Gabriel Wortman and knew the danger he posed, according to statements tabled at the inquiry. In June, 2019, the gunman bought two used police vehicles and bragged to Mr. Fisher that he intended to turn one of them into a real-looking, fully marked police vehicle.
After being unable to get in, the gunman, who had spent weeks prior to his attack unwilling to leave his bed, left the Fishers’ driveway as quickly as he came. He drove away before officers in a tactical armoured vehicle swarmed the home and snipers surrounded the property.
A few minutes after he left, as the police raced to the Fishers’ home, there was another 911 call about a new shooting down the road in Debert, N.S. Still driving his replica RCMP vehicle, complete with identical decals, lights and a black police push bar on the front, the killer pulled up beside two separate vehicles.
First he killed Kristen Beaton, a nurse and pregnant mother who had stopped on a gravel pullout off the road. He shot her multiple times through her car’s window, the inquiry heard, according to witnesses who were driving by.
A few hundred metres away, he killed another nurse, Heather O’Brien, in much the same fashion, shooting her through her car window. After she was murdered, Ms. O’Brien’s Jetta rolled off the road and into the woods. The documents described a frantic attempt by the first RCMP officer on scene to rescue her.
Ms. O’Brien’s family issued a statement on Thursday disputing the details of her final moments. They say she had a weak pulse and officers declared her dead too soon, calling off an air ambulance.
Moments before she saw the gunman, Ms. O’Brien was on the phone with a friend, talking about the violence in Portapique the night before, where the mass shooting had started. She had spotted the killer, but it was too late.
“I can see a police car,” she told her friend.
That friend, Leona Allen, later told investigators the last thing she heard was a scream, before the phone line went dead.
After Thursday’s presentation, a sombre commission chair Michael MacDonald adjourned the inquiry until April 11. He said those who lost loved ones in the tragedy must be kept central to the commission’s work – and he reminded those analyzing the events that they’re “on the lucky side of the equation.”
“Our hearts go out to those families,” he said.
With a report from The Canadian Press
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