‘I saw him with my own eyes shoot Nathan Cirillo’
By the time reports began to emerge last Oct. 22 about a shooting at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, 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.
Until now, the definitive public image of the attacker from that day 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.
It appeared to be a photo of a photo displayed on another screen, but its origin was a mystery.
From the moment that photograph appeared, questions have persisted about who took it, when it was taken and how it made its way onto social media even as the police were still hunting a suspected second shooter.
The Ottawa 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 photograph of Cpl. Cirillo taken seconds before Zehaf-Bibeau started firing.
They are not the accidental snaps of a fumbling tourist, but the work of a photographer who knew something horrible was happening and was determined to document it.
French tourist Jean Paul (who has asked the Citizen to use only his first name) and his wife were visiting Canada for 32 days in the fall of 2014, touring Quebec City, Gaspésie and the Saguenay before ending their trip in Ottawa.
The morning of Oct. 22, Jean Paul — 63 and recently retired — his wife, her sister and her sister’s husband had purchased tickets for a bus tour of the city. The tour departed from Sparks Street, located a block from Parliament Hill, at 10 a.m. The group arrived nearly half an hour early, so they walked over to the nearby National War Memorial, where two ceremonial guards were standing duty.
“All four of us were on the square,” Jean Paul said in an interview. “We were taking pictures. I moved a bit closer than them to take pictures, a bit closer to the guards and particularly the commemorative plaque on the memorial.”
Jean Paul and his companions saw a man approach, as if from nowhere, with what he described as a “hood” over his face. He approached from the west side of the cenotaph, from the rear. Rifle pointed, the gunman fired once, then again.
“I realized that this wasn’t a movie, that it was really an attack.”
It was then that Jean Paul began taking pictures. First, he captured the last known picture of Cirillo before being shot as he stood sentry along with his friend and fellow soldier, Cpl. Branden Stevenson.
Then, just 12 seconds after that photo was taken, Jean Paul captured Zehaf-Bibeau with the barrel of his Winchester sporting rifle aimed downward at Cirillo as he fired at the soldier, who is out of the frame. Cirillo’s rifle — unloaded, as was standard for all ceremonial guards — lay at the foot of the memorial.
“I took two pictures of him killing Nathan Cirillo,” Jean Paul said.
“I saw him with my own eyes shoot at Nathan Cirillo and his colleague next to him.”
Two seconds later, with his rifle still raised, though now level, Zehaf-Bibeau saw Jean Paul taking his picture.
“He looked me straight in the eyes. And he raised his rifle and yelled: ‘This is for Iraq.’ And then he ran off, he ran behind. He ran off and headed for the Parliament.”
It is this picture that would offer the world’s first look at the gunman. The closely cropped version disseminated online was part of a larger image that clearly placed Zehaf-Bibeau between the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the cenotaph. Just 44 seconds after making eye contact with Zehaf-Bibeau, and less than a minute after Cirillo and Stevenson first heard gunshots, Jean Paul took another picture as military staff and bystanders came to the fallen soldier’s aid. By the time this last photo was taken, Zehaf-Bibeau had left the War Memorial to storm Parliament Hill.
The image of Zehaf-Bibeau that began circulating online six hours after the shooting appeared to be a picture of a picture — a cellphone photo of a picture on a camera’s display screen.
The image was brought to wide public attention by a pro-ISIL Twitter account after it had allegedly already appeared in what Internet sleuths claimed was a tweet directed to the Ottawa Police Service’s official account. The Citizen has never verified the existence of that tweet to the police account. Many assumed, in those early moments, that a supporter of Zehaf-Bibeau, perhaps even an accomplice, had taken the picture and released it to the Internet.
Yet it was Jean Paul who captured those moments.
“For me, it was very important to capture this very serious time.”
As onlookers began gathering around the mortally wounded soldier, Jean Paul walked over to an Ottawa police officer and told him he had taken pictures of what had just happened. Another officer who was called over took Jean Paul’s camera and looked at the pictures.
“He wanted to know exactly who it was, how,” Jean Paul said.
The camera, and all four tourists, were taken to Ottawa police headquarters. Four officers individually questioned each member of the group.
“We swore on the Bible that we were telling the truth, nothing but the truth.”
Police returned the camera to him but not before retrieving the images, one of which was forwarded to the police email distribution list. The Internet leak of the photo is believed to have originated from law enforcement sources.
Ottawa police conducted an internal investigation and found that while no officer forwarded the email that contained the image, three civilians did and were disciplined.
Jean Paul has agreed to release the photos now, nearly a year after the attack, to help answer questions that remain. At his request, the Citizen has made a donation to the memorial trust fund for Cirillo’s young son, Marcus.
Months after the October shooting, jihadists carried out an attack at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
“All that brought back very difficult moments for us,” Jean Paul said. “And for the Canadian people. Because it’s terrorism. It’s terrorism, pure and simple.
“We will be thinking very, very much about the Canadian people on October 22, that’s clear.”