The Venerable, Trusted, Federal Policing Agency

"Wortman drove for about six minutes from Hunter Road and was approaching the New Annan Road intersection. He could likely see Lillian Hyslop turning the corner and walking away from him on the other side of the road. She got a little more than 100 metres down the road, just pas the big, green rectangular road sign alerting drivers to turn right for West New Annan and Tatamagouche."

"It was around 9:34 a.m. when Wortman either drove across the highway or made a U-turn, stopped near Hyslop, took aim at her head with his laser sight and shot her, killing her instantly. She was his seventeenth victim in about eleven and a half hours."

Excerpted from 22 Murders, Paul Palango

Two years ago, in April, Gabriel Wortman, a Halifax, Nova Scotia denturist, 51, set out on a nightmarish vendetta against people he knew, innocent of the knowledge that they would be hunted down and murdered by a man known to be violently irascible and controlling, who collected firearms and decommissioned RCMP vehicles. He would end a two-day killing spree by killing 22 men and women, some of whom he knew, others complete strangers, including an RCMP constable.

 

Those two days in April constituted the deadliest mass shooting event that Canada had ever experienced. And the federal police agency tasked with maintaining peace and good order failed to demonstrate on that singular occasion that they remain the stuff of legendary policing history. An enquiry was called, and now the Mass Casualty Commission is in the process, begun in February, of hearing testimony to enable them to reach a consensus on how this mass murder spree failed to be apprehended on the very first day that thirteen people in Portapique, lost their lives.

 

Gabriel Wortman committed mass murder in Portapique, where he and his common-law wife had a cottage, and set fire to homes of many of those he shot to death. 911 calls went out immediately the first of the killings began on his murderous rampage and he eluded capture as RCMP began entering the town. He spent the night in hiding, and by 6:36 a.m. the following morning set out to continue his killing spree. The enquiry heard that the RCMP failed to make use of its Alert Ready system which would have ensured an audible warning was circulated to the community and beyond.

 

The RCMP blocks the path to Gabriel Wortman's property in Portapique during a criminal investigation into the shootings. (Jonathan Villeneuve/Radio-Canada)

Reasonable speculation has it that notification of the community and its further surroundings would have alerted people to danger, and possibly saved an additional nine lives. It took too long for police to begin sending out alerts, including the predator's description -- and took even longer for additional alerts to be circulated warning that he would be driving an RCMP look-alike vehicle. Initially, back in Portapique, the first three responders to the "shooting" came close to firing on an innocent person thinking him to be the shooter.

 

He was actually a man visiting his father who lived in Portapique and had gone out to look for his brother, who, hearing inexplicable sounds had gone out to investigate. The man had gone to a nearby forest, shining his flashlight, when he discovered the body of his brother, shot dead. This was the man the RCMP constables mistook for the killer, but they lost sight of the figure when he turned off his flashlight because he saw the lights illuminating figures in the distance that he thought might be the killer.

 

Another RCMP constable saw the killer bearing an "unsettling grimace", drive past him in the opposite direction on the highway on the second day of the massacre when a hunt for the murderer was well underway. "If I stop and this is the bad guy, I'm going to get shot here, I'm going to get killed", the constable told lawyers for the enquiry. He drove on before finally turning back, thinking if he attempted to turn, on the tight two-lane highway he could be ambushed. When he finally drove in the direction the killer had taken, he had lost him.

 

Soon afterward, Wortman encountered RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson, who recognized who he was, rammed his vehicle, and was shot to death by Wortman in a follow-up exchange of gunfire. The killer took Const.Stevenson's firearms and set off again. On another occasion, RCMP came across another victim on April 19. Heather O'Brien 55, was on the phone with a friend while seated in her parked Volkswagon Jetta. Wortman fired several shots into the vehicle that hit the woman. And then sped away.

 

When RCMP arrived they checked the woman's condition, declaring there was no pulse and her digits were 'cold'. They would not permit paramedics to approach, nor would they allow the woman's daughter to go to her mother's vehicle, telling them it was unsafe to remain there, the killer could be nearby. "You need to go. It's not safe for you to be here", one constable said to the woman's daughter. It was later discovered through the woman's Fitbit that she was registering a heartbeat nearly eight hours after being shot.

 

Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19. Top row from left: Gina Goulet, Dawn Gulenchyn, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchyn, Sean McLeod, Alanna Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O'Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from top: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joanne Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)