Tourist captured killer on film
Photos taken by a French tourist during the shooting at the War Memorial last October show new details of the deadly attack and reveal the origin of a grainy image of the killer that came to symbolize homegrown terror
By the time reports began to emerge about a shooting at the National War Memorial last Oct. 22, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo was lying by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier dying in a pool of his own blood, and the troubled Muslim convert Michael Zehaf-Bibeau had taken his rampage to Parliament Hill.
Many Canadians have seen the CCTV footage of Zehaf-Bibeau’s dash onto the Hill, his hijacking of a car, and his measured jog up the steps into Centre Block, rifle in hand. And we have seen the cellphone video shot by Zehaf-Bibeau himself as he sat in his car, preparing to bring Islamic terrorism to the capital.
But we know relatively little of what actually happened at the War Memorial. Until now, the only image of the attacker seen by the public was a single, grainy photograph of Zehaf-Bibeau with a scarf around his face, holding his rifle and staring straight into the camera, with the distinctive stonework of the memorial behind him.
Since then, questions have persisted about who took the photo, when it was taken and how it made its way onto social media even as the police were still hunting what they believed was a second shooter somewhere in the downtown core.
The Citizen has obtained a series of photographs, spanning a period of less than two minutes, that show the terrible drama of the shooting at the War Memorial, including the last known photo of Cpl. Cirillo taken before Zehaf-Bibeau started firing.
These photos are not the work of a professional photographer, nor are they grabbed from security camera footage. They were taken by a French visitor as he waited with his wife to hop on a tour bus. From the first casual snapshots of the Memorial to the deliberate photographs of a killer in action, these shocking images fill in important gaps in the record. They help us track Zehaf-Bibeau’s movements and actions at the War Memorial, hint at Cirillo’s desperate attempt to flee his killer and show the first frantic efforts of passersby to save his life.