Three years after mass killing, crucial questions remain

RCMP response will be central to commission’s final report

Just shy of three years after the worst mass shooting in Canadian history, the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry will release its final report Thursday on what happened before, during and after the horrific 13 hours in April 2020 when a gunman killed 22 people, burned homes and terrorized much of northern Nova Scotia.

The report — 3,000 pages in seven volumes — brings to a close the MCC’s two-and-a-half-year, $20million-plus probe into not only what happened, but also why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again.

On April 18 and 19, 2020, Gabriel Wortman, a 51-year-old denturist, went on a shooting rampage dressed in an RCMP uniform and in a replica RCMP car, killing 22 people, including a pregnant woman, beginning in Portapique and ending almost 100 kilometres away in Enfield, when police caught up with him and shot him.

The inquiry into that shooting raised questions about RCMP response, procedures and attitudes toward victims and the public, how we as a society treat domestic violence, and even how to conduct future similar inquiries.

Here are some of the things we learned during the inquiry that followed:

The first night, in Portapique

The evening that ended in bloodshed, flames and anguish began with an anniversary celebration.

The shooter and his common-law spouse, Lisa Banfield, began the evening celebrating their 19th year together with drinks in their Portapique warehouse and had a video chat with friends in the United States.

At some point, that devolved into an argument, the assault and temporary imprisonment of Banfield in a replica RCMP vehicle, her subsequent escape and Wortman going on a shooting rampage in the neighbourhood, killing 13 of his neighbours and torching several of their houses, along with his own.

It began with the shooting of Greg Blair on the front deck of his house and his wife, Linda, as she barricaded their bedroom door with her body, trying to protect their children. The children, undetected after their mother’s death, fled through the darkness to their neighbours’ house, where they called 911.

The Portapique shootings ended that night with the gunning down of Corrie Ellison outside the killer’s burning warehouse.

But questions persist over the timeline of the killer’s movements.

That’s important, because it speaks to whether he had left Portapique before — or very soon after — the RCMP arrived at the scene, or whether he left later, after police presence was established.

If it is the latter, it raises the question about the adequacy of RCMP containment effort — had they managed to confine the killer to Portapique, nine lives might have been saved the following day.

While there is solid evidence about the time of the death of the shooter’s last victim, Corrie Ellison, there is some ambiguity in testimonies on the moments following that.

One witness described seeing, at about 10:45 p.m., a car speeding up a dirt road known to locals as the “blueberry field road” toward Brown Loop, which connected with Highway 2 east of Portapique Beach Road. But another witness testified to having his car parked on Brown Loop during that time and not seeing any cars, let alone a replica RCMP vehicle.

The second day: rampage resumes

After dodging the police in Portapique, the shooter spent the night in an industrial park in Debert before resuming his rampage.

His first victims that day were Sean McLeod and Alanna Jenkins, 50 kilometres north in Wentworth. After killing them and setting their house afire, he killed their neighbour, Tom Bagley, as he came to help.

At this point, the RCMP knew the gunman was driving a replica police car. They’d been told that by witnesses the previous night and by Banfield when she emerged from hiding in the early morning. Yet it was still several hours before they told the public about it — via Twitter at 10:17 a.m.

In the interim, the shooter randomly killed three more people — including the pregnant Kristen Beaton — at the side of the road.

That replica police car also played a part in the non-fatal shooting of RCMP Const. Chad Morrison — who thought he was meeting Const. Heidi Stevenson — and the fatal shootings of both Stevenson and bystander Joey Webber.

There was one more victim — Gina Goulet — a denturist known to both the shooter and Banfield. Oddly, on an anniversary drive the previous day, before the shooting started, Wortman had pointed out Goulet’s house to Banfield.

Forensic evidence suggests the killer shot Goulet nine times before stealing her car and leaving. It would prove to be his undoing — there was little fuel in the car.

He was spotted by police at a gas station in Enfield moments later and shot dead.

The delay in warning the public and the inefficient means of doing so — via Twitter rather than using the province’s emergency alert system — was one of the most dissected issues as the inquiry ran its course.

The RCMP has since made changes in its protocol regarding the use of the province’s emergency alert system. It now sends alerts on a regular basis.

Onslow fire hall shooting incident

In the heat of the manhunt for the killer on April 19, Const. Terry Brown and Const. Dave Melanson opened fire on a colleague sitting in his police car and an RCMP civilian liaison officer outside the Onslow fire hall, about eight kilometres west of Truro.

Neither the officer, Const. Dave Gagnon, nor emergency management co-ordinator Dave Westlake was injured, but the hail of bullets ripping into the fire hall caused $43,000 in damage and traumatized Chief Greg Muise and Deputy Fire Chief Darrell Currie, who were inside, along with Richard Ellison, whose son Corrie had been killed the night before in Portapique.

Melanson and Brown opened fire despite having the information on the call sign and the distinctive push bumper of the gunman’s replica car and despite Gagnon’s car being positioned in such a way that both were viewable.

Nova Scotia’s independent watchdog later decided that no charges were warranted against either officer.

Lisa Banfield, Wortman’s spouse

Possibly the most anticipated testimony at the inquiry was that of the killer’s common-law spouse.

When it came, it was not without controversy.

Though she had spoken with police four times in the aftermath of the mass shooting, Banfield, who had been charged by police with providing ammunition to the killer, refused — through her lawyer — to testify at the inquiry unless those charges went away.

When they did, and when she testified at the inquiry, it was with a caveat — she would only speak to the MCC counsel and would not be cross-examined by lawyers representing the families of the victims.

At that point in the inquiry, that state of affairs was not unusual — several RCMP officers had availed themselves of the same caveat, ostensibly to prevent them from being further traumatized.

But in all cases, the lack of independent cross-examination frustrated the victims’ families and created the perception that truth that was being revealed might not have been the full and complete truth, said lawyers for those families.

In Banfield’s case, the situation was most critical. Because the U.S. friends they were speaking to on the night of April 18 were not called to testify, Banfield was the sole witness to the beginning of the mass killing and the only person who could possibly answer the question: Why?

And though her testimony touched on the gunman’s anger issues, his pattern of domestic violence and of the events of that first night, the families of the victims had questions about gaps in her story that weren’t filled by the commission counsel.

The mass killer: Gabriel Wortman

Further details on the gunman began to emerge as the inquiry progressed.

Although many who met him portrayed him as pleasant and affable, he had a long history of domestic violence that dated back to nearly the beginning of his relationship with Banfield. Neighbours and police were aware of it, and it was reported to police, but the RCMP took no firm action.

He also had a violent streak — enough so that those around him, including Banfield, feared the repercussions of involving the police. Wortman’s cousin — himself an exRCMP officer — told RCMP after the fact that Wortman put himself through university by smuggling alcohol and tobacco across the border in Houlton, Maine. He described Wortman to police as “almost a career criminal.”

The cousin said he decided, as a police officer, that he had to keep his distance from Wortman.

That same cousin also confirmed a report of Wortman brutally beating his own father during a family trip to the Dominican Republic in 2016.

It was also known that he had a collection of guns, some of which he’d smuggled in from the U.S. That too was reported to police but no action was taken.

RCMP response in Portapique and beyond

Many early initial questions for the RCMP revolved around when and how it discovered that the killer was dressed in one of their uniforms and driving a replica police car, why the Mounties waited several hours to inform the public of this and why, when they eventually did so, they spurned the use of the province’s emergency alert system in favour of social media.

But as the inquiry progressed, more questions arose about the initial police response to the reports of shooting in Portapique.

Why was the gunman allowed to escape Portapique that night? Why did the RCMP seem to have inadequate mapping of the area and apparently no one with first-hand knowledge? Why were containment efforts concentrated to the west of Portapique and none to the east in the directions where the killer eventually escaped?

In their initial response to 911 calls about the shooting, Staff Sgt. Brian Rehill, the officer in charge, sent three RCMP officers — forming an Immediate Action Rapid Deployment (IARD) team — into Portapique to hunt for the gunman.

When reinforcements arrived later, Sgt. Andy O’Brien told the new arrivals to stay put at the head of Portapique Beach Road, fearing that in the dark officers might shoot at each other. It was more than 90 minutes before any other RCMP officers joined the initial IARD team.

In fact, the RCMP had the means to track each of their officers that night, by way of a GPS system incorporated into their hand-held radios. But that system had not been activated, and the IARD team members themselves were not even aware it existed.

The Mass Casualty Commission process

At the outset, MCC commissioner Michael McDonald made it clear that the inquiry’s mandate was not about assigning blame, but about understanding what happened before, during and after the mass shooting, why it happened, and how to prevent it from happening again.

He also said the inquiry would be taking a trauma-informed approach, to minimize the risk of retraumatizing those who had been already affected by their connections to the mass shooting.

But as the inquiry progressed, eyebrows were raised as on a near-weekly basis lawyers for the RCMP and the Department of Justice used that approach as the basis for arguments that police officers should a) not testify before the inquiry at all, b) testify before the inquiry by remote video conference, or c) testify before the commission counsel but not be subject to cross examination by independent counsel.

The delay in warning the public and the inefficient means of doing so — via Twitter rather than using the province’s emergency alert system — was one of the most dissected issues as the inquiry ran its course. The RCMP has since made changes in its protocol and now sends alerts on a regular basis