An RCMP officer talks with a local resident before escorting them home at a roadblock in Portapique, N.S., on April 22, 2020. The morning after a gunman killed 13 people in northern Nova Scotia, the RCMP were unaware he had resumed shooting people until frantic 911 calls.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
Lillian Campbell was out for her morning walk that Sunday in April, wearing a reflective vest and carrying her walking stick, when a car that looked just like an RCMP cruiser passed her in the road. The vehicle made a sudden U-turn, drove back toward her, and rolled down the window.
From her bedroom, neighbour Mary-Ann Jay heard the gunshot. She looked out to see Ms. Campbell lying at the side of the rural highway. She’d been fatally shot by Gabriel Wortman, who had spent months meticulously assembling a realistic-looking RCMP vehicle complete with identical decals.
He’d already killed 16 people before he shot Ms. Campbell, a 65-year-old wife and mother, and would take five more lives before he was finally stopped.
“I just saw an RCM- What? She’s dead? She’s dead!” Ms. Jay told a 911 dispatcher, according to the transcript of her frantic phone call.
Families of victims say that the nine deaths that came on the second day of the rampage, in which 22 people were murdered, could have been prevented if the RCMP had better communicated the risk to the public. They argue that victims such as Ms. Campbell might have stayed home if they had known a dangerous gunman was driving around their province.
The final moments of Ms. Campbell’s life were detailed inside a Halifax ballroom Wednesday, where the Mass Casualty Commission is examining the worst multiple shooting in Canadian history. The public inquiry into the events of April 18-19, 2020, has the task of making recommendations to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
New documents released through the inquiry show that early on April 19, the RCMP were unaware the gunman had slipped away from them in Portapique and resumed shooting people until terrified 911 calls started coming in shortly after 9:30 a.m.
The dispatcher told Ms. Jay and her husband to stay inside, telling them it wasn’t safe to go near the body. Ms. Jay didn’t know that a heavily armed gunman dressed as a Mountie was terrorizing her province.
“We can’t just leave this woman lying at the side of the road,” she told 911.
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It wasn’t until after Ms. Campbell’s murder that the Nova Scotia RCMP began telling the public that a gunman was on the loose, finally sharing his name and details of the replica police car he was driving – information they had the night before but didn’t share publicly. Prior to that, they’d described the mass shooting as an “active shooter” situation limited to the Portapique area.
When police did alert the public, they did so through Twitter, information that was broadcasted by media outlets. But the province’s public emergency alerting system, known as the Alert Ready System, was never used at any point during the manhunt. The RCMP were in the process of preparing an alert message when the gunman was shot and killed at a gas station outside of Halifax at around 11:26 a.m.
Anger over the RCMP’s poor communication with the public during the mass shooting was spelled out for the inquiry in a private meeting with the family of Alanna Jenkins, who was awake early that Sunday morning and texting with her neighbour from her country home near Wentworth, N.S. Ms. Jenkins and her husband, Sean McLeod, who were acquaintances of the gunman, were both murdered in their home some time after 6:30 a.m.
The gunman had driven more than 40 kilometres to their house before the sun rose that morning after hiding out overnight in Debert, N.S. The couple’s charred remains, along with those of their two dogs, were found inside what was left of their home.
“Alanna and Sean both had phones. If the alert had gone out at 11 p.m. [on the night before they were killed] they would have been on high alert because they knew Gabriel,” says the summary of the Jenkins family meeting with the commission.
The Jenkins family told the commission that the RCMP were to blame for the deaths that came after the gunman escaped from Portapique, saying, “the family doesn’t think anyone needed to die on April 19,” according to the summary of their meeting with the inquiry’s investigators.
“They knew who Gabriel was, but they didn’t put up any roadblocks or send out an alert.”
Ms. Jenkins’s family told the inquiry they’ve since lost trust in the RCMP. Her father said he’s no longer sure he would stop if he sees an RCMP vehicle driving behind him in the road with its lights on.
“At the time, they believed the information the RCMP was giving them, but within a short period of time, they realized some of what the RCMP said was a lie,” the document says.
“Their security and trust in the RCMP was then lost. The RCMP were caught so many times between what they said on TV and what was later reported. The family still feels as though they don’t have any answers.”
Another victim that morning, 70-year-old retired firefighter Tom Bagley, was found outside the home of Ms. Jenkins and Mr. McLeod. Like Ms. Campbell, he didn’t know the gunman, and it’s believed he was killed when he went to his neighbours’ home to help after seeing the fire.
Also like Ms. Campbell, Mr. Bagley was out for his usual Sunday morning walk. The inquiry heard how he’d left his house around 8:50 a.m.
His widow, Patsy, told investigators that Mr. Bagley had checked Facebook and the news before leaving for his walk, but there was no indication he knew anything about the killings the night before. He finished his second cup of coffee, gave the family pet some affection, and headed out the door.
“Daddy will see you in bit,” he said to his dog.
The inquiry continues Thursday. It is expected that senior RCMP officials will testify later in the process.
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