13 deadly hours: The Nova Scotia mass shooting - The Fifth Estate

Then there is a structure fire. There's a person down there with a gun. He was in possession of a replica of a fully marked and equipped RCMP vehicle and was wearing a police uniform. How the hell is that not a red flag? She didn't know it would be like this. the last kiss i would give this is a series of 22 homicides they failed to give the public the information they needed to stay safe they failed at that i'm julian finley in port pic

nova

scotia

it was on this road where the largest

mass

occurred The

shooting

s in Canada's story began, and yet all these months later there are still questions: What did the military police know about the killer?

What did you do to try to stop it? This is a story of 13 terrible

hours

that no one in this province will ever forget. It is the

fifth

state Port-A-Pick is a Nova Scotia country house located on the shores of Financing Bay, a quiet place, but on the night of April 18, Port-A-Pick was on fire, there were shots fired and soon the accounts circulated on facebook i have a lot of friends who live in the harbor selection area and they said there are big fires above the tree line and they heard

shooting

was possible so at first I didn't think anything of it and then I heard it was in portrait. beach road porta pick beach road is around the corner from where tyler blair's father greg lived with his wife jamie and their two youngest children his neighbor was a man named gabriel wartman an adventurer by profession with his neighbors in port- a-pick wartman was an eccentric He was known to have guns and a bad temper that night he was on a rampage.

I think my dad was outside at the time Gabriel came in and I think some words were said to each other and they said they heard my dad yell what the hell are you doing? a gun and then he shot my father, that's when Jamie ran to the door, grabbed them and pushed them down the hallway and they all ran into their room and my two little brothers hid behind the bed and Jamie put her back against the interior door to his room and he just walked through it, the police would later tell Tyler that his parents were the first to die that night.

His stepmother was shot while she was on the 9-1-1 line. Jamie she is like a mother to me for almost 20 years. years one of the best people you will ever meet they are great people very hard working my father worked very hard his entire life and was finally free of mortgages and debt he was about to start living life I mean that like he had seen his son die mother, the 10 and 12 year old boys hid in a closet until they realized the gunman was trying to set the house on fire, they could smell the smoke but at that time it was gun smoke and then my little brother .

He came out and watched as he dragged some logs over the fire, scattered them on the ground and then lit the propane stove. They knew they had to run and they ran through the woods to the next closest house which belonged to Lisa McCully, a teacher with two children of her own, I know she was such a vibrant expression of life, her humor and her musicality and how she absorbed every moment. of life, she was fearless and she was your, you know, your classic mama bear, she was very protective of everyone. and she had gone out to see these flames that were higher than the tree line and she came out because she saw an rcmp officer come out to ask if we should evacuate what the hell is going on and he was shot, now we know that on April 18th. and 19, the gunman was wearing parts of an authentic rcmp uniform, including a shirt and pants with a yellow stripe.

In the days that followed, the rcmp seemed as stunned as everyone else. The officers arrived at Puerto Pick to chaos. He says there's a fire in the structure. There's a person. there with a gun and immediately, according to the rcmp, they began searching for the gunman, what they found were the bodies of the blairs lisa mccully, eventually ten more would be found corey ellison john zahl and joanne thomas dawn and frank gilletjen joy and peter bond emily tuck and his parents aaron and jolene no, not sure at 11:32 on saturday night, the rcmp issued its first public warning, a tweet with no mention of fires or people being shot, just a complaint about firearms and a warning to those at the pick-up port to stay within 50 kilometers away.

Porto Pick north of Truro town Nick Beaton and his wife Kristen had also seen posts on Facebook, we talked about it and went to bed and I stayed up a little later watching what was going on, it just went silent . Kristin was a community. health worker who often traveled to places like porto pick but that night there was no feeling of imminent danger, you know, I was thinking about the people who lived there, but there was no real concern, as if I was not there in any way And there are many communities between us and Port-au-Prince for a nurse's family, although a colleague of Kristen's had concern.

Heather O'Brien was an old friend of the Blairs from Port-au-Prince. Her daughter Darcy was the The first to hear the terrible news was that my husband went out and woke me up at 5:30 in the morning on the 19th, at that time we were not sure what had happened and I called my mother and told her I said: you know, what Jamie and Greg are like. dead, not sure what's going on, internal police bulletins show that during the night police identified Wartman as a possible suspect, but it wasn't until dawn, they say, that a witness showed up to confirm their suspicions.

I heard a knock on my door. I looked around. She is Gabriel Wartman's girlfriend. I went to the door, opened the door, pushed it in, closed the door, and closed it again. She told him that she had been hiding in the woods all night. She would later tell the police. Wartman had beaten and restrained her. She's just freaking out. bouncing around the floor and she said Gabriel lost his mind I told her no, she burned her own host and she says panic I put her in the bathroom I called 9-1-1 our officers responded and it was at that moment that through a important key witness we confirmed more details about gabriel wardman, this included the fact that he was in possession of a replica of a fully marked and equipped rcmp vehicle and was wearing a police uniform, but where was that vehicle and where was wartman more than 12

hours

after their initial arrival to the port-a-peak area where we began receiving a second series of calls to 9-1-1 which was in an area that was over 60 kilometers from the port-a-peak area that area is Wentworth Valley 45 minutes by In the car the calls were coming from another collection of cottages and cabins on Hunter Road and my neighbor texted me and said did anyone hear gunshots early this morning and I said I didn't hear any gunshots this morning, then I said I'm here and I can hear something now and all of a sudden there was a big explosion and I was like oh my gosh what did you hear, what's going on and they texted me back and said Oh my God, don't go anywhere. a crazy man on the road security cameras would record what looked like an RCMP cruiser on Hunter Road at 6:30 that morning near Alana Jenkins and Sean McCloud's house when the car left three hours later they would be dead I want say, do you have any?

I have no idea why he would have attacked them, maybe because they were happy, maybe he was jealous, he envied them because they had a life that he didn't have. I really don't know, that's the only reasoning I could come up with. Wartman knew Jenkins and McLeod. They were correctional officers, father and stepmother of two girls, Emilia, eighteen years old, everything I know, my dad taught me. I wouldn't be who I am without him. I grew up going fishing and hunting. He taught me everything. Like they really cared. Selfless loving, yes, funny, his house was always welcoming to everyone, so that house was burned down too.

A neighbor, Tom Bagley, came to investigate and was also killed a few minutes later, as was Lillian Campbell, who was out for a morning walk. Hunter Road in Wentworth is about 40 kilometers away. from the city of de bert on sunday morning, kristen beaton was getting ready to go there to work, she was going to work early in the morning, you know, six and seven, whatever time it was, she came in and gave me a big kiss and a big hug and she said honey, you're the best and little did I know, little did I know it would be the last one I would have, the last kiss I would have even from the road, Kristen was keeping an eye on Facebook, that's how it was. just before 10 she called nick to tell him that someone had reposted a new rcmp tweet identifying gabriel wartman as the porta pick suspect.

I remember writing it down on a piece of paper and I was talking, you know, I just said, okay, I'm going to go and see if he has Facebook to find his picture and send it to you in case you see him to avoid him or what do you like to think it was like? an isolated incident that he and his family were involved in or you know. whatever don't think he's targeting innocent people and I sent him the p, I sent him the picture of him and that was the last thing he read right now.

Heather O'Brien was also away visiting her children, who she knew would be upset about what had happened to the Blairs? We have a group chat with all my brothers and sisters and she texted and said, "Place your coffee orders, I'll come with coffee" and she knew we were all a little nervous about what was happening earlier. to choose from, so I think more than anything he wanted to see us, make sure everyone was okay, heather o'brien and kristen beaton would die on the same country road, 300 meters away, he texted us at 9 59 that the rcmp said the words were rcmp and they shot bert i think she was right there when kristen beaton was killed he thought maybe she witnessed it or saw too much heard too much um she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time so that 12 hours after it started, the death toll was 19 and the gunman dressed as a police officer had not yet finished from Debert to an area called shubanakadi.

It's another 50 kilometer drive, and once again, security cameras captured Wartman on the road calmly stopping. to remove his jacket before continuing, the rcmp was receiving reports of sightings having failed to set up barricades overnight, they began sending officers to set up barricades. Officers Chad Morrison and Heidi Stevenson were traveling to meet, both communicating on their police radios. together what appeared to be a marked police vehicle approached officer morrison gospel morrison thought the vehicle was caused by stevenson the approaching police vehicle was actually driven by the gunman the gunman pulled up next to officer morrison and immediately opened fire morrison She would survive the Shot a few minutes later, Stevenson did not after crashing into her patrol car, a worker killed her and stole her service pistol before attacking Joey Webber, who had stopped to help, and then set everyone on fire. cars.

The gunman's last victim was Gina Goulet, a fellow dentist who happened to live near him after killing her, Wartman stole her car and traveled another 13 miles before running out of gas. It was only then and only because an RCMP tactical unit had also stopped for gas that the killing spree finally came to an end while he was at the gas pump one of our tactical resources came to the gas station to refuel his vehicle. when the officer got out of the vehicle there was an encounter and the gunman was shot dead by the police, we have reports of the suspect in pixel 11 of Enfield 26 am 13 hours 22 innocent people killed a gunman who had traveled the province about 200 kilometers in total without being detected and without stopping how it had happened when we returned do you think that's how we got in that's how we got out I know that's how we got out Seven months later, mourning continues for the 22 Nova Scotians who were murdered, compounding The grieving is the questions: What did the RCMP know?

What did they do to try to stop the murderer? Could any of the victims have been saved? It all happened so fast that I don't think anyone could have saved Lisa. I think what could have saved Lisa is to go back 10 years to 2002. Gabriel Wartman was convicted of assault in 2010. He was investigated for threatening his parents. His father says he told the police. Wartman had guns. In 2011, there was another tip to Truro City Municipal Police. He was told that Wartman kept most of his weapons in his cabin in Pick Harbor. According to the informant, he was starting to have mental problems and told people that he wanted to kill a police officer, so that's a community. a safety issue and an officer safety issue, so they are taken very seriously, that's why our officer recorded it so the bulletin would be shared with all police agencies in the province, but Truro Police had no jurisdiction over Porto's selection, the RCMP did have an officer. sent to visit wartman, rcmp says, but took no further action, won't say what he did two years later when he received another complaint about gabriel wartman and guns, when we first met him, it was a little sketchy,He found out we were military and he showed me and my husband all the illegal guns he had and then he asked us if we could get him some guns and some bullets and stuff and I went and my husband both said no it's illegal you can't.

Do that, Forbes reported the encounter to the RCMP, as well as information that Wartman was abusing his female partner. Did they tell you they were going to investigate? They said they didn't say they were going to investigate. They said they were going to verify. on that, um, but they also said there's probably nothing we can do like we did. I had no real evidence that the weapons were there, like pictures or whatever, but you had the knowledge, yeah, you had what you saw and stuff. It hasn't been enough for them to go and knock on the door and I would check it out.

Nova Scotians have a lot of questions about what happened, why it happened, what things were done and what weren't done, rest assured we have the same things. questions and we will seek answers through our investigation in seven months the rcmp has offered few answers most of what is known has come from the media taking the rcmp to court to force disclosures as well as From the families of the victims who have been conducting their own investigation, it seems to me that the RCMP does not want the whole story to come to light about how this tragedy was responded to.

Um it took place why wouldn't they want it to come to light? Well, to be honest, it seems pretty embarrassing. Take the RCMP's initial response. He still does not say exactly how many officers were sent to carry a selection that night or when reinforcements arrived. arrived but insists that the first responders were heroes who immediately pursued the threat as dictated by their training, their goal was to locate and stop that threat. This is exactly what those RCMP first responders were working for, but one witness we've spoken to didn't see evidence of that until the emergency response team arrived from Halifax, which he says was more than two hours later.

The initial RCMP response consisted of three police cars, according to witnesses, parked at the entrance to Pick Harbor. As I understand it, during that time it was more of a safe operation on the scene rather than boots on the ground, let us know, let's neutralize the gunman and it could have saved more lives, that's certainly how others who were also there saw it. I hid in the woods for about four hours looking up at the sky. cold dead sky looking for flashing red lights that never came, that never came, so hours, hours, people were there burning to death and dying, it took hours for an answer, that's not right, it's not right at all and remember Those two young men who were there when the gunman killed their parents, kept their minds clear and stayed safe, that's when they ran through the woods and came to the neighbor's house and ran inside with Lisa McColly's two young children together, The children hid in the basement and called 9-1. 1 I think they just talked to them the whole time, keeping them calm, gave them the safe word not to come out until they heard someone come in and say that word, but that would take a hell of a lot of time again, longer than the two hours it should have taken . two hours to get in and get four small children out of an area.

You know there's a crazy guy running around with a gun. Yeah, do you know why they didn't? The McCully family says RCMP told them they knew the children were there and had bet so much. like six officers around the house to protect them but tyler blair has never been told that and he doesn't believe it okay that's cool but why wouldn't they have one more to get in? I understand, do you think there were police stationed around this? I highly doubt it, you doubt it, yes, why have they caught the RCMP. They've already caught a lot of lies like I don't know.

It's hard for me to believe a word that comes. mouth, whatever was or was not happening on the ground, the rcmp was busy throughout the night tracking down vehicles associated with gabriel wartman, including old police cars, at dawn, when the three had been accounted for, the rcmp did the fateful assumption that they believed wartman was dead and that he had committed suicide and was in one of their buildings, that assumption was confirmed by an rcmp source who says that at the time some officers were even sent home but were later They found out about the fourth replica of the police car and something else they hadn't realized, poor thing. to pick up had a way back down a dirt road through a blueberry field yeah do you think that's how we got out that's how we got out I know that's how he got out they assumed he committed suicide well that's good Let them assume that, but if he didn't do that, he drove down this road, it's the only way to get out of here, everyone in the community knows he's here, but Leon Jodry says that that night the police didn't ask what you would have told them, they left through this road. road is Just amazing, it happened that they assumed and then they didn't know it until it started killing.

He could have been on a plane in another country if he had played his cards right. Instead, he moved freely for 13 hours during the night, as police later learned. an industrial park before getting back on the road like I grew up in this community there are very few ways in and out they could have blocked the roads in so many places they didn't I don't get it I don't get it either. You could have blocked the road to Wetworth and Glenn Home and he would never have made it to Wetworth, so they had a chance to stop him before they killed the people who died on the 19th.

They should have had cars in almost every area they could have notified local dispatchers like churro police and they were not and drove to the churro police chief truro didn't find out about it until a week later i can tell you that you know this didn't happen in our jurisdiction however, We are the neighboring police agency and obviously community safety is our number one focus, as well as officer safety, so any information we would have obtained would have been helpful on Sunday morning. Truro police called additional officers and were offering help, but Truro was turned away. the rcmp, as it was the next closest municipal force, the rcmp instead turned to its own for reinforcements in halifax and moncton, both an hour and a half away with so many out-of-town officers converging near pick port, communication was a challenge that almost turned

deadly

in the nearby community of Onslow upon realizing Wartman had a skateboard and pickaxe Sunday morning, RCMP sent out a bulletin to all police services to be on the lookout for the fake cruiser at the Onslow volunteer fire hall, an officer was standing guard at his cruiser. when another rcmp car drove by minutes later there were shots, i heard the shots, i was in this front room, right here, someone came running through the front door yelling, take cover, get off or shots were fired, both front doors opened, they ran, one ran into the ditch and one ran behind the dumpster across the street sharon mcclellan was on the phone with her sister and watched as the officers in the passing patrol car jumped out and opened fire and started shooting and i started to freak out because I thought the shooter was there, but the shooter was I had no idea what was going on, the police officer at the station that was there started raising his hands to tell them it's me, don't shoot, I have no idea what type of weapons they were, but there were more than 32 holes. in that fire hall and it was total chaos, total chaos, key cops come to mind, but it was a complete and utter failure, I was lucky those firefighters weren't shot to death, you know, with gunshots that went through the wall to communicate, to say it.

At least, but nothing, compared to how the rcmp was relaying critical information to the public when we returned, whoever made the call to not issue an alert, there is fault there and it would have saved my mother's life, I believe that with all my heart. In times of emergency, information can save lives On that terrible weekend in April when 22 innocent Nova Scotians lost their lives, the RCMP did not issue a province-wide emergency alert, but instead contacted the public in social media, they shared everything through Twitter, which is an absolute Get mad at me and anyone I have a conversation with, are you on Twitter?

Abs. I don't know anyone who is Ryan Reynolds. He's the only one I know on Twitter. No friend I know uses Twitter within 13 hours. The RCMP tweeted ten times in confidence. He later told local media that they would rebroadcast the tweets. Anyone who had seen them would have assumed they were the most recent and complete information the rcmp had, but that was not always the case. Remember what the rcmp said about how and when they learned critical details about the gunman it was at that time that through a significant key witness we confirmed further details about gabriel wardman this included the fact that he was in possession of a replica of a vehicle fully marked and equipped and wearing a police uniform, the rcmp said The information came from the worker's partner who did not come out of hiding until the early hours of Sunday morning before that time.

We didn't have all those details. Most of the details about our suspect came to us at that time, but we learned that the rcmp did have them. the same details at least eight hours before the first witness found in Puerto Pick that man has never been publicly identified was driving his car when Wortman shot and wounded him he did not want to talk to us but at 10:30 Saturday night spoke to an rcmp officer at the scene i saw a game i saw him and i saw his gun he had a laser sight on the gun in this audio tape obtained by the

fifth

estate

he explains to a private investigator what he told the officer i think I literally said 90 percent sure it's my favorite game and he had a CPR officer, our CPR car.

He knew he had those cars, but he had never seen them. The insignia he said made it look exactly like a real police cruiser. It was a The aftershock or stampede grabbed the radio from him and broadcast exactly what I told him. The police must have believed the man because internal police bulletins show that by 1 a.m. they had identified Wartman as a suspect linking him to an old white police car. Seven hours later, an update was received. It was a fully marked police car and crucially he gave the number. He also warned police that Wartman could be anywhere in the province, but that's not what the RCMP was telling the public at almost exactly the same time that internal newsletter posted another tweet warning that its investigation into the active shooter was continuing. , the dangers were still limited to port-a-pick 50 minutes after that, another tweet identified Wartman but made no mention of him being anywhere or any of the information we now know the rcmp received the night before.

Goed over and over, they did not reveal that he was dressed as an officer or an American cruiser. If the RCMP had armed us with the information of who he was and what they knew at 11 o'clock on Saturday night, she would have made. If he hadn't been on the road, he wouldn't have been, he wouldn't have left the house. You know me and many other blue noses and Nova Scotians were sitting on the front porch with their firearms protecting her family and she would have been. behind me she would have been safe too for heather o'brien the information would come too late it would have been after mom was killed that he posted that he was in the Glen Home area it was after she was murdered that they posted that he was in an rcmp car it was after, everything was after and that is information that the rcmp had known for hours since the night before o'brien and beaton were murdered just after 10 a.m. on sunday at 5 and 5 p.m. minutes, the rcmp finally shared those critical details with their families.

They are convinced that it could have saved the women and others as well and if that had been the first time it was shared with the public, it was 10 17 that morning, yes, that would have made a difference if that had certainly been known, Yes, your mom, do you think I? I think it would have made a difference for my mother I think it would have made a difference for Lillian Hislop and Kristen Beaton Joey Weber because Tina Goulet didn't give the public the information they needed to stay safe, they failed on that Heather O'Brien thing. She was a mother of eight, grandmother of 12.

My mother was kind, I think that's the easiest word to describe her, she would do anything for anyone, she would give you the shirt off her back, so she, she, she , she was spiritual, she was very involved. melody, she was amazing, she really was a born healer, she wanted to save the world, so it's almost like she knew she had to have blood, the love of a lifetime in three years, theLife was perfect, it was perfect in every way we just found out. We found out that she was pregnant with her second child, that we were trying and we were very excited and the stars were aligning for us, you know, it's us, we live payday to payday, but we didn't care about that.

You know, we had each other and a healthy child and another on the way after the tragedy, Nova Scotia stood firm by hugging the families of the 22 who were murdered, but when those families started asking tough questions, the government of Nova Scotia and the police force it employs was silent, the rcmp didn't really tell me, jack, I know as much now as I did in April or maybe, what do you think of that? You know it's embarrassing, I think we shouldn't have done it. to fight and beg for answers, that's why I watch it, but they had to fight and because they did, there will now be a public inquiry, although the findings will take at least two years.

Every family still has their questions why the RCMP apparently did that fateful thing. Initial assumption that Wartman was dead. I asked that question in my interview. They couldn't respond. They were going to look into it and get back to me. I haven't heard anything yet, it's been months, so when you don't have answers, what do you think? raises questions heather o'brien's family wants a straight answer on how she died rcmp insists wartman's impersonation of an officer played no role in her death or any gunman didn't use replica trooper vehicle rcmp to stop any of the victims who were in their vehicles at the time we know that at least three of the victims were stopped because they saw an rcmp car and they felt safe because they thought they had a duty to stop because it was a rcmp car. the rcmp or actively stopped to help the rcmp. in apparent distress saying the vehicle and/or uniform played no role in those who I believe are deliberately misleading o'brien's family says they were also misled about how he was shot across the road and at a distance , the rcmp told them then they recovered his car, we know it was his hand and the gun was inside his vehicle, how do you know that?

Because my father has shell casings from his gun that were never cleaned from the car, so we recovered the car with uh. we recovered the car with a lot of evidence in it what was in it there were still pieces of it inside that vehicle when we recovered it the families are now suing the rcmp and the province of Nova Scotia for negligence we just want answers we want the truth total transparency what than the rcmp to say we made a mistake, we made mistakes here here and here we are learning from it and it is not going to happen again, they should already be reviewing what they did wrong and the rcmp will not answer that or any question because it says It is still being investigating how Gabriel Wartman got his illegal weapons and who could have helped him.

Relevant questions, without a doubt, but not the only ones or the most important for the 22 families now struggling to move forward. So, if you could join your mother at the front. from the screen we have a tribute to you mia and your father sean and atlantis we would like you to join us in front of the screen please in june emilia mcleod graduated high school without her father uh, it was a difficult and very emotional day, But in your mind, what did you think that day would be like if your dad had been there? I know it would have been a much happier day.

I knew he would have been there. I would have been so proud if they had both been what Do you think your mom would think of all this now? I have said this many times if it were me or one of my sisters my brother my dad she would have done everything I have done and would not have settled for anything less than the truth she would have demanded it it would have been worse than me everyone says you know that I'm out there and I'm loud they would have been scared if she walked up to that CPR station because I wouldn't have agreed to get an answer about anything, so you run your dad's business now, yeah, which was always our plan, but It wasn't supposed to happen this fast and this way, and now you're taking care of your brothers, yeah, and how old are you, Tyler, 27? this on your shoulders at 27. yes, doing what I have to do, what my father would want me to do, I can stay here and play the rest of my life, which I know Christian wouldn't want or fight because I won't sit around.

I tried to sit down so I could heal so I could deal with it and I can't. I need answers. I said no more, no more. I'm ready to fight, so are you.