Police told of mass shooter’s arsenal

NEIGHBOURS IN N.S.

HALIFAX • A former neighbour of the gunman in last month’s mass shooting in Nova Scotia says she reported his domestic violence and cache of firearms to the RCMP years ago and ended up leaving the community herself out of fear.

Brenda Forbes said that in the summer of 2013, she told police about reports that Gabriel Wortman had held down and beaten his common-law spouse behind one of the properties he owned in Portapique, a coastal community west of Truro.

Domestic violence is being examined as a key aspect of the mass shooting, as police have said the rampage began on the night of April 18 after the gunman argued with his common-law spouse and restrained and beat her before she escaped. He went on to kill 22 people before police killed him outside a gas station in Enfield, N.S.

Forbes said shortly after Wortman moved to Portapique in the early 2000s, his partner came to her door and asked for help.

“She ran to my house and said Gabriel was beating on her and she had to get away. She was afraid,” said the 62-year-old veteran of the Canadian Forces.

Forbes said she encouraged her neighbour to seek help but recalled that she was frightened of her partner and of repercussions of going to police due to threats he’d made against her family.

She said that in 2013 she learned Wortman had been seen hitting his partner behind one of his properties.

“He had her on the ground, was strangling her ... He was beating on her,” she said of the account she heard, saying there were three male witnesses.

“On that incident, I called the RCMP and I told them what happened, and I said he has a bunch of illegal weapons, and I know because he showed them to us,” said Forbes, who has since moved outside the province.

She said the RCMP interviewed her. She said she encouraged one of the three witnesses to talk to police, but he refused, saying he feared Wortman.

“From what I got from the RCMP, because (the partner) would not put in a complaint, as she was scared to death, they basically said, ‘There’s not much we can do. We can monitor him but there’s not much else we can do,’ ” she said.

A spokesperson for the RCMP wasn’t available for comment Tuesday.

Forbes’s husband, who also served in the Canadian Forces, recalled being shown Wortman’s weapons cache.

“He knew I had weapons, being in the military, so he was always one of those guys who had to show others that whatever they had, he had something better,” George Forbes said.

“We reported that to the police also,” he said. Police have said the gunman didn’t have a licence for his weapons.

Brenda Forbes said she and her husband left the area in 2014 out of growing fear and discomfort over Wortman’s behaviour.