‘We’re saying our goodbyes today’
EDMONTON — With tears streaming down her face, the wife of Const. David Matthew Wynn thanked her husband’s RCMP family, and said her own family was now preparing to let him go.
“We’re saying our goodbyes today,” Shelly MacInnis-Wynn said Monday, speaking to reporters at Edmonton’s RCMP headquarters. “From there, he will be in a better place.”
Wynn was shot and critically injured during a routine call about a stolen pickup truck at the Apex Casino in St. Albert, Alta., just northwest of Edmonton, early Saturday morning. He had been on life support and his condition had not changed since Saturday.
MacInnis-Wynn thanked St. Albert RCMP officers for their ongoing support. Her sister-in-law, Dawn Sephton, stood by her side, and her uncle, Duncan MacInnis, was nearby for support.
“I was told ... when Dave graduated how much support we would have through his whole career, but I never really knew until now,” MacInnis-Wynn said. “I just want to say thank you. I love them to death, and Dave loved them to death.”
Wynn and his partner, auxiliary Const. Derek Walter Bond, 49, were inside the casino when Shawn Maxwell Rehn, 34, twisted away from the officers, pulled out a handgun and fired twice. He struck both officers at close range. Bond was released from hospital Saturday evening but RCMP say he faces a long recovery.
A friend of Wynn says the 42-year-old husband and father of three is the type of person that would have likely gone “above and beyond” to help the man that ultimately shot him in the head.
Before becoming an RCMP officer, Wynn was a paramedic in Bridgewater, N.S., from 1996 to 2009.
Tim Conrad was a volunteer firefighter in Bridgewater at the time and often crossed paths with Wynn, who he described as professional, smart and having a great sense of humour.
“That’s what hurts the most about this,” Conrad said.
“Dave is the kind of guy who would have done all that he could to help this person. It’s tough when you have someone that’s willing to go to that extreme to help someone, and the result being this.”
Before they moved to Alberta, Wynn and his wife volunteered with the Red Cross in Nova Scotia, with Wynn serving as a first aid responder instructor and trainer in the 1990s, Ismael Aquino, the provincial director for Red Cross, said Monday.
Wynn was very involved in the community in both Bridgewater and St. Albert.
He was the RCMP’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education liaison officer at the Keenooshayo Elementary School for the past five years, said Paula Power, St. Albert Public School’s communication manager.
“He is very well respected and well liked in the school,” Power said.
“The kids are always lining up to give him hugs and take photos with him.”
In Nova Scotia on Monday, Mike Conklin, former president of the Bridgewater Minor Hockey Association, described Wynn as the “penultimate hockey dad.”
All three of Wynn’s boys played in the Bridgewater league at the same time, and Wynn was an active volunteer who also helped coach his oldest son’s team at the novice level.
“He was always extremely supportive of the kids, their teammates, parents and coaches,” Conklin said. “He was the best example of Hockey Canada’s Fair Play Code that you could find.”
Wynn also took on the position of co-ordinating ice times for 180 kids in the minor program in Bridgewater before leaving to enter the RCMP Academy in Regina.
“Word spread kind of quickly through the rinks here in Nova Scotia on Saturday,” Conklin said. “It is a big shock.”
In 2009, Wynn decided he wanted to change careers and become an RCMP officer. He spoke to many of his friends at the Bridgewater Police Service before finally applying, police chief John Collyer said.
“I think he wanted to be more proactive,” Collyer said. “My sense is that he was looking for a change and a challenge. He liked to challenge himself, and do new things regularly.”
Collyer, who was a reference for Wynn when he applied to become an officer, said the posting in St. Albert was Wynn’s first with the RCMP.
MacInnis-Wynn said the support of RCMP had been “unbelievable” in the wake of the shooting.
“They’ve been our family because we moved so far away from home for five years, and they have just been there at any time, whenever we needed them,” MacInnis-Wynn said. “My heart just goes out to them that they have to keep continuing to work through all of this, because I know they are grieving as well.”