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

[Music] so there's a structure fire uh there's a person down there with a gun he was in possession of a fully marked and equipped replica rcmp vehicle and was wearing a police uniform how in the hell is he not a red flag little did i know that would be the last kiss i'd have 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 puerto pic nova scotia it was on this road that the largest mass shooting in canadian history began and yet all these months later there are still questions what did the rcmp know about the killer what did it do to try and stop him this is a story of 13 terrible hours that no one in this province will ever forget this is the fifth estate porta pick is nova scotia cottage country nestled on the shores of the bay of funding a quiet place but on the night of april 18th port-a-pick was on fire there were gun shots and soon accounts were circulating on facebook i have a lot of friends that live down the port pick area and they said there's large fires over the tree line and that they heard it was possible shooting so i didn't think anything of it at first and then i heard that it was on portrait beach road porta pick beach road is just around the corner from where tyler blair's father greg lived with his wife jamie and two younger sons their neighbor was a man named gabriel wartman adventurous by profession to his neighbors in port-a-pick wartman was an eccentric known to have guns and a temper that night he was on a rampage i believe my father was outside at the time when gabriel came in and i think a few words were said and they said they heard my dad yell what the f are you doing with a gun and then he shot my father that's when jamie ran back into the door and got them and pushed them down the hallway and they all ran down into their bedroom and my two little brothers hid behind the bed and jamie put her back up against the interior door of their bedroom and he just shot right through it police would later tell tyler his parents were the first to die that night his stepmom was shot while on the line to 9-1-1 jamie she's like a mother to me for almost 20 years one of the best people you'll ever meet they're great people very hard workers my father worked very hard his whole life and he finally just became mortgage-free debt-free he was about to start living life i want to say that like i cut short having watched their mother die the boys aged 10 and 12 hid in a closet until they realized the gunman was trying to set the house on fire they could smell the smoke but it was gun smoke at that point and then my little brother went out and seen that he pulled some logs over the fire scattered them around on the floor and then turn the propane range on they knew they had to run and they did through the woods to the next nearest house which belonged to lisa mccully a teacher with two children of her own [Music] i know she was such a vibrant expression of life [Music] her humor and her musicality and how she just soaked up every moment of life she was fearless and she was your you know your your classic mama bear she was so protective of everyone and she had gone out to see these flames that were higher than the tree line and went out because she saw an rcmp officer went out to probably ask should we evacuate what the heck is going on and she was shot we now know that on april 18th and 19th the gunman wore parts of an authentic rcmp uniform including a shirt and pants with a yellow stripe in the days that followed the rcmp seemed as dumbfounded as everyone else officers arrived in puerto pick to chaos it says so there's a structure fire there's a person down there with a gun and immediately as per rcmp started searching for the gunman what they found were bodies [Music] 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 her parents aaron and jolene [Music] no not for sure at 11 32 saturday night rcmp issued their first public warning a tweet no mention of fires or people being shot simply a firearms complaint and a warning to those in port-a-pick to stay inside [Music] 50 kilometers away from porto pick north of the town of truro 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 kind of watching what was going on it just went quiet kristin was a community health care worker who often traveled to places like porto pick but that night there was no sense of impending danger you know i was thinking of the people that lived there but there was no real concern like it wasn't next door by any means and there's a lot of communities between us and port-au-prince for the family of a nurse though a colleague of kristen's there was concern heather o'brien was a long-time friend of the blairs from port-au-prince her daughter darcy was the first to hear the terrible news my husband came out and woke me up at 5 30 in the morning on the 19th at that point we weren't sure like what had happened and called my mom and i said you know like jamie jamie and greg are dead i'm not sure what's going on internal police bulletins show that overnight the rcmp identified wartman as a possible suspect but it wasn't until dawn they say that a witness emerged to confirm their suspicions i heard a banging at my door i peeked around it's gabriel wartman's girlfriend i went to the door opened the door pulled her inside slammed the door and relocked it she told him she'd been hiding in the woods all night she'd later tell police wartman had beaten and restrained her she's just freaking out bouncing around the floor and said gabriel lost his mind i said no [ __ ] he burned his own host down and she says panic i put her in the bathroom i called 9-1-1 our officers responded and it was at that time that through a significant significant key witness we confirmed more details about gabriel wardman this included the fact that he was in possession of a fully marked and equipped replica rcmp vehicle and was wearing a police uniform but where was that vehicle and where was wartman [Music] more than 12 hours after initial arrival in the port-a-peak area that we began receiving a second series of 9-1-1 calls that was in an area which was more than 60 kilometers away from the port-a-peak area that area is the wentworth valley 45 minutes by car the calls were coming from another collection of country homes and cottages on hunter road and my neighbor said texted and said did anybody hear shots early this morning and i said i didn't hear any shots this morning then i said i'm here and i can hear something now then all of a sudden it there was a big explosion and i'm like oh my god like what did you hear that what's going on and they they texted back and they said oh my god don't go anywhere there's 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 the home of alana jenkins and sean mccloud when the car left three hours later they would be dead i mean do you have any idea why he would have targeted them maybe because they were happy maybe he was jealous envied them because they had a life that he didn't have i i really don't know that's the only reasoning that i could come up with wartman knew jenkins and mcleod they were correctional officers father and stepmother to two girls eighteen-year-old emilia everything i know my dad taught me i wouldn't be who i am without him like i grew up going fishing hunting like he taught me everything like they were really caring selfless loving yeah fun their house was always welcoming to everybody so that house too was set ablaze [Music] a neighbor tom bagley came to investigate and was also killed a few minutes later so was lillian campbell out for a morning walk [Music] hunter road in wentworth is about 40 kilometers from the town of de bert on sunday morning kristen beaton was getting ready to head that way for work she was going to work early in the morning i you know six seven whatever time it was and she came in and she gave me a big kiss and a big hug and she said baby you're the best and little did i know little did i know that would be the last one i'd have last kiss i'd have [Music] even from the road kristen was keeping an eye on facebook it was just before 10 that she called nick to say 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 gonna go and see if he has facebook to find his picture to send it to you just in case you see him to avoid him or or what have you like thinking that it's again that it was like an isolated incident that him and family got into it or you know whatever not thinking that he's out targeting innocent people and i sent her the p i sent her the picture of him and it was the last thing she read by now heather o'brien was on the road too visiting her children whom she knew would be upset by what had happened to the blairs we have a group chat with all my brothers and sisters and she texted and said putting your coffee orders i'll come with coffee and she knew we were all kind of a little bit on edge about what was happening before to pick so she just i think more than anything she just kind of wanted to see us make sure everybody was okay heather o'brien and kristen beaton would die on the same rural road 300 meters apart she sent us a text message at 9 59 that said the rcmp the words were rcmp and shots fired into bert i think she happened to be right there when kristen beaton was killed that he thought that maybe she witnessed it or she saw too much heard too much um she she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time so 12 hours after it started the death toll was 19 and the gunman dressed as a cop wasn't finished yet from debert to an area called shubanakadi it's another 50 kilometer drive once again security cameras captured wartman along the way calmly stopping to remove his jacket before carrying on by now the rcmp was getting reports of sightings having failed to set up barricades overnight it started dispatching officers to set up roadblocks constables chad morrison and heidi stevenson were traveling to meet each other both were communicating on their police radios with each other what appeared to be a marked police vehicle then approached constable morrison gospel morrison thought that the vehicle was caused by stevenson the approaching police vehicle was actually driven by the gunman the gunman pulled up beside constable morrison and immediately opened fire morrison would survive the shooting a few minutes later stevenson would not after crashing into her cruiser workman killed her and stole her service pistol before turning on joey webber who had stopped to help he then set all the cars on fire [Music] the gunman's last victim was gina goulet a fellow denturist who happened to live nearby after killing her wartman stole her car traveled another 21 kilometers 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 was finally brought to an end while he's at the gas pumps one of our tactical resources came to the gas station to refuel their vehicle when the officer exited the vehicle there was an encounter and the gunman was shot and killed by police roger we have reports of the suspect down at the enfield pixel [Music] 11 26 am 13 hours 22 innocent people dead a gunman who had traveled across the province close to 200 kilometers in all undetected and unstopped how had it happened when we come back do you think that's how we got in it's how we get out i know it's how we get out [Music] seven months later the grieving continues for the 22 nova scotians who were killed compounding the grieve are the questions what did the rcmp know what did they do to try and stop the killer could any of the victims have been spared it all happened so fast that i don't believe anyone could have saved lisa i think that what could have saved lisa is to go back 10 years in 2002 gabriel wartman was convicted of assault in 2010 he was investigated for threatening his parents his father says he told police wartman had guns in 2011 there was another tip municipal police in the town of truro were told wartman kept most of his guns at his cottage in puerto pick he was starting to have mental issues according to the tipster telling people he wanted to kill a cop so that's a community safety issue and an officer safety issue so those are taken very seriously that's why our officer did record it for the bulletin to be shared with all police agencies in the province but truro police didn't have jurisdiction over porto pick the rcmp did an officer was sent to visit wartman the rcmp says but took no further action it won't say what it did two years later when it got yet another complaint about gabriel wartman and guns when we first met him it was a little sketchy he found out that we were military and he showed myself and my husband all the illegal weapons that he had and then he asked us if we could get him some weapons and some um bullets and stuff and i went and my husband both of us 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 partner did they tell you that they were going to investigate they said they didn't say that they were going to investigate they said they're going to check on it um but they said also that there's probably nothing that we can do like we did i didn't have actual proof proof that the weapons were there like pictures or whatever but you had the knowledge yeah you had what you saw and and would that not have been enough for them to go and and knock on the door and i would check it out [Music] nova scotians have lots of questions about what happened why it happened what things were done and what wasn't you can be assured that we have those same questions and we'll be seeking 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 victims families who've been conducting their own investigation [Music] it seems to me that the rcmp are are not wanting the entire story to come out about how the response to this tragedy um took place why would they not want it to come out uh well to be frank it's it seems to be quite embarrassing take the rcmp's initial response it still won't say exactly how many officers were dispatched to port a pick that night or when reinforcements arrived but it insists the first responders were heroes immediately going after the threat as dictated by their training their objective was to locate and to stop that threat this is exactly what those rcmp first responders were working towards but a witness we've talked to saw no evidence of that not until the emergency response team arrived from halifax which he says was more than two hours later the rcmp's initial response consisted of three police cars according to witnesses parked at the entrance to puerto pick my understanding is during that time it was more of a secure the scene operation rather than a a boots on the ground let's you know let's neutralize the gunman and it could have saved some more lives that's certainly how it looked to others who were there too i hid in the woods for about four hours staring up the sky freezing to death looking for red flashing lights that never came that never came so hours hours people were there burning to death and dying it took hours for a response that's not right that's not right at all and remember those two young boys who were there when the gunman killed their parents [Music] they kept clear minds and kept themselves safe that's when they booked it through the woods and over to the neighbor's house and they ran inside with lisa mccolly's two young kids 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 they gave them that safe word to not come out until they hear somebody come in and say that word but that would take an awfully long time again more than two hours it should take two hours to go in and get four young kids out of an area you know some madman's running around with a gun yeah do you know why they didn't the mccully family says rcmp told them it knew the children were there and had stationed as many as six officers around the house to protect them but tyler blair has never been told that and he doesn't believe it all right that's that's all fine but why wouldn't they have one more to go in yeah do you i mean from what you understand do you do you think that there were police that were stationed around this i highly doubt it you doubt it yeah why the rcmp have caught been caught many lies already like i don't know it's hard for me to believe a word that comes over the mouth whatever was or wasn't happening on the ground the rcmp was busy overnight tracking vehicles associated with gabriel wartman including former police cars by dawn when all three had been accounted for the rcmp then made a fateful assumption that they believed wartman was dead that he had committed suicide and was in one of his buildings that assumption has been confirmed by an rcmp source who says at that point some officers were even sent home but then they learned about that fourth replica police car and something else they hadn't realized poor to pick had a back way out a dirt road through a blueberry field yeah do you think that's how we got out it's how we get out i know it's how he get out they assumed he killed himself well that's good for them to assume that but if he didn't do that he drove out this road it's the only way out of here everybody in the community knows it that it's here but leon jodry says that night police didn't ask what would you have told them they went out this road it's just unbelievable it happened that they assumed and then didn't know until he picked up killing he could have been in a plane in another country if he would have played his cards right instead he moved freely for 13 hours overnighting as police would later learn in an industrial park before hitting the road again like i grew up in this community there's very few ways in and out they could have blocked the roads in so many places that they didn't no roadblocks i don't i don't understand that either you could have blocked off the highway to wentworth and glenn home and he never would have made it to wentworth so they had an opportunity to stop him before the people who died on the 19th were killed they should have had cars in pretty much every area that they could local dispatchers like churro police should have been notified and they weren't and he drove through churro truro's police chief didn't learn that 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 that we would have obtained would have been helpful on sunday morning truro police called in extra officers and was offering help but truro was stood down by the rcmp as was the next closest municipal force instead the rcmp 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 port of pick communication was a challenge one that almost turned deadly in the nearby community of onslow having realized wartman had a skateboard a pick on sunday morning the rcmp sent a bulletin to all police services to be on the lookout for the fake cruiser at onslow's volunteer fire hall an officer was standing guard in his cruiser when another rcmp car drove by minutes later there was gunfire i heard the shots i was in this front room right here somebody come running through the front door yelling take cover get down or shots fired both front doors opened they ran one ran into the ditch and one ran behind the garbage bin across the street sharon mcclellan was on the phone with her sister and watched as officers in the passing cruiser jumped out and opened fire and they started shooting and i started freaking because i thought the shooter was there but the shooter wasn't there i had no idea what was going on the station cop that was there started putting his hands up pretty much to tell them it's me don't shoot i have no idea what kind of weapons they were but there was more than 32 holes in that fire hall and it was just it was total chaos total chaos keystone cops comes to mind but just a complete and utter failure just lucky that those firefighters weren't shot and killed you know with shots going through the wall for communication to say the least but nothing compared to how the rcmp was conveying critical information to the public when we come back whoever it was who made the call not to set out an alert there is blame there and it would have saved my mother my mother's life i believe that wholeheartedly [Music] in times of emergency information can save lives on that terrible april weekend when 22 innocent nova scotians lost their lives the rcmp did not issue a province-wide emergency alert instead it communicated with the public on social media they shared everything over twitter which is an absolute piss off to me and anyone i have a conversation with are you on twitter abs i don't know anyone that's ryan reynolds is the only one i know on twitter like no buddy i know uses twitter in 13 hours the rcmp tweeted ten times relying it later said on local media to rebroadcast the tweets anyone who did see them would have assumed they were the latest and most complete information the rcmp had but that wasn't always the case remember what the rcmp said about how and when it learned critical details about the gunman it was at that time that through a significant that significant key witness we confirmed more details about gabriel wardman this included the fact that he was in possession of a fully marked and equipped replica rcmp vehicle and was wearing a police uniform the rcmp said that information came from workman's partner who didn't emerge from hiding until early sunday morning prior to that time we did not have all those details the bulk of the details about our suspect came to us at that time but we've learned the rcmp did have the very same details at least eight hours earlier from the very first witness it encountered in puerto pick that man has never been identified publicly he was driving his car when wortman shot and injured him he wouldn't speak to us but at 10 30 saturday night he did speak to an rcmp officer on 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 an rcp officer our rcp car i knew he had those cars but i've never seen them [Music] the badges he said made it look exactly like a real police cruiser it was a replica or stampeder grabbed his radio and radioed exactly what i told him [Music] the rcmp must have believed the man because internal police bulletins show that by 1 am it had identified wartman as a suspect linking him to an old white police car seven hours later an update called it a fully marked police car and gave the number crucially it also warned police that wartman could be anywhere in the province but that's not what the rcmp was telling the public at almost the exact same time as that internal bulletin it put out another tweet advising that its active shooter investigation was continuing the dangers still confined to port-a-pick 50 minutes after that another tweet did identify wartman but made no mention of him being anywhere or any of the information we now know the rcmp received the night before i've gone over and over and over again they didn't release that he was dressed as an officer or an america cruiser if the rcmp had armed us with the information of who he was and what they knew by 11 o'clock saturday night there's she wouldn't have been on the road she wouldn't have been she wouldn't have left the house you know me and many other blue nosers and nova scotians were sitting on the front deck with their firearms protecting their family and she'd have been behind me she'd have been safe for heather o'brien too the information would come too late would have been after mom was killed that he they posted that he was in the glen home area it was after she was killed that they posted he was in an rcmp car it was after it was all after and that's information the rcmp had known for hours since the night before o'brien and beaton were killed just after 10 sunday morning at 17 minutes past 10 the rcmp finally shared those critical details their families are convinced could have saved the women and others too and that had that was the first time it was shared with the public was it 10 17 that morning yes would that have made a difference if that certainly had yeah known to your mom do you think 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 [Music] joey weber because tina goulet [Music] they failed to give the public the information they needed to stay safe they failed at that [Music] heather o'brien was mother to eight grandmother to 12. my mother was kind i think that was that is the easiest word to describe her is she would do anything for anybody she would give you the shirt off her back so she she she was spiritual she was very in tune she's she was amazing she really was she natural born healer that one she wanted to save the world so [Music] it's almost like she knew she had to [Music] had blood a whole life's loving into three years life was perfect [Music] it was perfect in every way we just found out she was pregnant [Music] with her second child that we've been that we were trying for and we were so excited and and the stars were just lining up for us you know it's we we lived payday to payday but that didn't matter to us you know we had each other and a healthy boy and another one on the way [Music] [Music] in the aftermath of the tragedy nova scotia stood strong embracing the families of the 22 who were killed but when those families started asking hard questions the government of nova scotia and the police force it employs went quiet the rcmp really didn't tell me jack [ __ ] i know just as much now as i did back in april or may what do you what do you make of that you know it's it's disgraceful i think we shouldn't have to fight and beg for answers that's why i look at it but they did have to fight and because they did there will now be a public inquiry though findings will take at least two years every family still has its questions why the rcmp apparently made that fateful early assumption that wartman was dead i asked that question in my interview they couldn't answer they were going to look into it and get back to me i haven't heard nothing yet it's been months so when you don't have answers your mind creates questions heather o'brien's family wants a straight answer as to how she died the rcmp insists wartman's impersonation of an officer played no role in her death or any the gunman did not use the rcmp replica vehicle to pull over any of the victims who were in their vehicles at the time we know that at least three of the victims were either stopped because they saw an rcmp car and felt safe stopped because they thought they had a duty to stop because it was an rcmp car or actively stopped to help the rcmp in in apparent distress to say that the vehicle and or uniform didn't play a role in those i think is deliberately misleading o'brien's family says they were also misled about how she was shot across the road and at a distance the rcmp told them then they got her car back we know that he was his hand and gun were inside of her vehicle how do you know that because my father has shell casings from his gun that were never cleaned out of the car so we got the car back with uh we got the car back with a lot of evidence in it what was in it there were still pieces of her inside that vehicle when we got it back [Music] the families are now suing the rcmp and the province of nova scotia for negligence we just want answers we want the truth full transparency what the rcmp to say we messed up we made mistakes here here and here we're learning from it and it's not going to happen again they should already be reviewing what they did wrong and have they the rcmp won't answer that or any questions because it says it's still investigating how gabriel wartman got his illegal weapons and who might have helped him relevant questions to be sure but not the only or most important ones for the 22 families now struggling to move on [Music] so mia if you could uh join your mother down in front of the screen we have a tribute to you mia and your father sean and atlantis we'd like to have you join us down in front of the screen please in june emilia mcleod graduated from high school without her dad uh it was hard a really emotional day [Music] but in your mind what did you think that day was going to be like had your dad been there i know it would have been a lot happier day i knew he would have been there he would have been so proud they both would have been what do you think your mom would think of all of this now i have often said this if it was myself or one of my sisters my brother my dad she would have done everything i have done and more she wouldn't have settled for anything less than the truth she she would have demanded it she'd have been worse than me everybody says you know i'm out there and i'm loud they would have been scared if she walked towards that rcp station because she wouldn't have taken no for an answer on anything so [Music] you run your dad's business now yep which was always our plan but wasn't supposed to happen this quick and this way and and you are now taking care of your brothers yep and how old are you tyler 27 all of this on your shoulders at 27. yep doing what i should do what my father would want me to do i can lay here and ball the rest of my life which i know christian wouldn't want or fight because i'm not sitting back i i tried to sit back 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 you

Channel: The Fifth Estate

Views: 859,313

Keywords: Nova Scotia, mass shooting, shooter, gunman, investigation, RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Gabriel Wortman, Portapique, The Fifth Estate, CBC, CBC News, documentary, Mountie, police, Wentworth, Debert, Shubenacadie, Canada

Id: 2vtp75VeOAk

Length: 43min 51sec (2631 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020