Throughout the region, dozens of roadsides memorials – Christine Heart stops to pay her respects at one for Lillian Hyslop in Wentworth, N.S. on April 24, 2020 – of tulips, tiny plastic windmills, cut-out hearts and bows made from Nova Scotia tartan grow larger by the day.Liam Hennessey/The Canadian Press
RCMP Sergeant Dave Lilly’s voice cracks with emotion as he stands on the gravel shoulder of Highway 4 in Wentworth, N.S.
The 23-year veteran of the force works out of the detachment in Amherst, N.S., and was one of dozens of officers who responded on April 18 and 19 to the worst mass shooting in Canadian history.
On Friday, ahead of an online vigil to remember the 22 people killed in the rampage, Sgt. Lilly and his wife drove to some of the roadside memorials that have sprouted up to honour the victims.
“We feel guilty. We wish we could’ve done more,” he said, dressed in his formal uniform of red serge tunic and Stetson. “Any of us would’ve taken a bullet for any of these victims.”
The rampage, which spanned 90 kilometres in rural Nova Scotia and went on for more than 13 hours, began after the gunman, 51-year-old denturist Gabriel Wortman, assaulted his spouse in the small community of Portapique, where he owns a cottage. When RCMP arrived at 10:26 p.m. on April 18, they found people dead on the road and several homes engulfed in flames. Inside some of the homes, they found more victims.
Sgt. Lilly drove the children of Lisa McCully, one of the victims in Portapique, to a nearby hospital. When he returned, a perimeter had been set up in the beachfront community to contain the area.
At that point, RCMP say they knew who they were looking for. They knew the gunman had a pistol and long-barrelled guns. His home and garages were ablaze as were two of his replica police cars and another vehicle. They thought they had the scene contained, Sgt. Lilly said. So he and some of his colleagues headed for home, at around 6:30 or 7 a.m. on April 19.
“A lot of us broke off and went home after an exhausting night,” he said. “I went to bed thinking he was gone and finished and contained. And if I would have known [the shooter was still at large], I would’ve stayed out and continued looking, but we didn’t know. We tried our best and we’re feeling guilty that we sort of failed in that regard.”
Police realized the gunman was still active when his spouse emerged from the woods where she had been hiding and a series of 911 calls came in from the Wentworth area, 50 kilometres away, where more people were killed.
The spouse told police the gunman has another police-car replica and had been wearing a RCMP uniform.
On his drive home, Sgt. Lilly was likely in the Wentworth area about the same time as the shooter arrived.
“I probably would’ve missed him by seconds or minutes,” he said, adding that he if he had spotted the replica cruiser, it would have been a red flag.
“I knew where all my members were. One of my police officers lives up here but I know he’s out of town right now. If I had seen that police car, I would have known that he should not have been here.”
From Wentworth, the gunman drove to Debert and killed two more people. In Milford, about 60 kilometres away from Debert, RCMP Constable Heidi Stevenson, responding to calls about the gunman, collided head-on with the shooter in his vehicle. The gunman got out and shot her. Sgt. Lilly had gone to police training academy with Constable Stevenson in Regina 24 years earlier.
More than 13 hours after the murderous rampage began, the gunman was shot and killed by police while he was filling up at an Enfield gas station at 11:26 a.m. on April 19.
Sgt. Lilly says he and many other officers are wracked with guilt that they didn’t stop the gunman sooner.
The RCMP have said there will be a review of the force’s response, including why officials relied on Twitter instead of the province’s emergency alert system to advise the public a shooter was at large. Some people, including family members of victims, have complained that lives could have been saved by better communication.
On the side of Highway 4, Sgt. Lilly admitted his nerves are frayed. He can’t stop thinking about how the force would have done things differently if they had known what they know now.
“We did the best we could with the information that we had at the time, and all of us acted in good faith,” he said.
“I wish we could’ve done more. I wish we could’ve done more,” he added, before climbing into his navy pickup truck. Then he drove up Highway 4 toward Hunter Road, along the same route the killer took, to pay respect at the next scene of tragedy.
Throughout the region, dozens of roadsides memorials of tulips, tiny plastic windmills, cut-out hearts and bows made from Nova Scotia tartan grow larger by the day.