Images of a calm, calculated killer
Chilling mosque shooting videos shown during sentencing hearing
Warning: This story contains graphic content
QUEBEC The young child, no more than four or five years old, looks lost and confused standing alone in the middle of a mosque prayer room as chaos reigned. Shots had just rung out and bullets were about to fly again.
Alexandre Bissonnette was reloading his semi-automatic Glock handgun and was about to head back into the prayer room and start shooting again. The child by then had found refuge in a fivefoot-by-10-foot exitless alcove that was packed with people hiding from the gunman.
Security camera videos shown on the first day of Bissonnette’s sentencing hearing Wednesday show him calmly carrying out the rampage, retreating to a safe area to reload four times, and returning to some men he had shot to shoot them again, apparently to ensure they were dead.
The videos also show the heroism of one of the men who died, and put to rest conspiracy theories spread online that a second shooter was involved in the attack.
Bissonnette last month admitted he walked into the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec on Jan. 29, 2017, and killed six Muslim men. He pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder.
Before the 10 recordings were shown, Judge François Huot warned those in the gallery to think twice before watching. “These images are difficult, brutal,” Huot said.
Earlier Wednesday, Huot ruled that the news media could not broadcast the videos, but could report on what the recordings showed.
Several members of the Muslim community left before the videos were screened, but about two dozen remained in the courtroom, including Aymen Derbali, left paralyzed and in a wheelchair after risking his life to save others during the shooting.
The silent recordings, some in colour, others in black and white, were shown in a hushed courtroom, with prosecutor Thomas Jacques explaining the sequence of events and identifying the people shown.
On the night of the attack, Bissonnette was “methodical, strategic and cold-blooded,” Jacques said.
Their eyes fixed on multiple screens around the courtroom, some friends and family of the victims held their hands to their mouths as they watched, while others cried quietly.
The widow of one of the victims could be heard sobbing.
Bissonnette, his wrists and ankles shackled, sat in the glass-encased prisoner’s dock, his head down, avoiding the screen. He glanced up at least once before quickly turning his eyes toward the ground again.
His attack on the mosque lasted about two minutes — from just before 7:54 p.m. to just after 7:56 p.m.
Evening prayers started at 7:30 p.m. that day at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec in SteFoy, 10 kilometres southwest of Old Quebec.
About 15 minutes later, prayers were over, though a few men stayed behind for individual prayers. Other men were milling about, socializing. Three children sat on the floor, chatting. Some mosque members had left. Forty-six people remained, about half the number who had attended evening prayers that night.
Near the door, some men were putting on their shoes and boots. Two of them were about to be shot to death.
Outside, it was -22 C and snow covered the driveway of the mosque, which runs past the front door.
Just before 7:54 p.m., Bissonnette appears in one of the videos, calmly walking up the driveway toward the mosque. He opened the guitar case he was carrying and took out a semi-automatic .223-calibre rifle and loaded it.
Cousins Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42, and Ibrahima Barry, 39, were the first to leave the mosque, just after 7:54 p.m. Seeing Bissonnette aiming a rifle at them, they panicked and backed up toward the mosque, one of them falling on the sidewalk.
Bissonnette aimed his rifle and shot both of them, then calmly dropped the rifle — for which he had brought 29 rounds — and pulled out a handgun. The Barry cousins were on the pavement, bleeding, apparently unconscious.
Bissonnette walked up to each of them and shot them again with the 9-mm Glock pistol.
Inside the mosque, worshippers heard noises. There was confusion. Some thought firecrackers were being set off or stones were being thrown against the windows, Jacques said.
In the doorway, it appears from the footage that some realized the two men had been shot outside. They saw Bissonnette coming toward the door. They scrambled to save themselves, running down a corridor and into the prayer room.
Seeing the people scattering, Bissonnette entered via the front door just before 7:55 p.m., holding the handgun in his outstretched arm and shooting repeatedly. He emptied a 10-round magazine and reloaded. He would reload four times, firing a total of 48 rounds.
In the adjacent prayer room, terrified worshippers started running for cover, some of them pulling three children out of harm’s way.
The videos show Bissonnette charging into the prayer room through an archway, shooting repeatedly, then going back into the entryway to calmly reload. A man is seen dragging himself across the floor, apparently shot.
Just after 7:55 p.m., Azzeddine Soufiane tried to get others in the room to help him stop Bissonnette but then pressed ahead on his own.
Jacques said Soufiane showed “indescribable courage.” One video shows him rushing toward Bissonnette near the archway in an attempt to tackle him.
He almost succeeded. But Bissonnette, pinned against a wall, shot Soufiane repeatedly. The gunman then retreated to the entryway, reloaded and returned to shoot him again.
Soufiane, a 57-year-old grocer and butcher, died.
Bissonnette then moved to another archway so he could, according to Jacques, have a different angle and fire on people hiding in different places in the prayer room. Some had taken cover behind pillars.
Most of those who hid in the alcove, including a father who was there huddled with his two children, survived.
But Khaled Belkacemi, 60, the man closest to the alcove’s entryway was an easy target for Bissonnette. Belkacemi, a Université Laval professor, was shot and killed. One video shows his body lying on the floor near the alcove.
Bissonnette left the building, gun in hand, just after 7:56 p.m. He would call 911 about 20 minutes later to surrender.
Two minutes after Bissonnette left the mosque, Mohamed Belkhadir is shown arriving on the scene.
A member of the mosque, he was at evening prayers that night but left to clear snow from a walkway. Alerted to the shooting by a couple that had escaped the mosque, Belkhadir returned and found the Barry cousins on the ground.
The videos show him checking on the two men and taking off his coat to cover one of them. He told investigators that Mamadou Tanou Barry was breathing and he wanted to keep him warm.
A cellphone in hand, he was on the line with a 911 operator describing what he had found. He entered the mosque and exited again. Then, suddenly, he is shown running off. Two police officers, their guns drawn and aimed in Belkhadir’s direction, enter the frame.
Belkahadir panicked when he saw the guns pointed at him, prosecutor Jacques said. He thought the police officers were the killers.
An engineering student at Université Laval, Belkahadir was arrested but later released by police. This led to rumours of a second shooter, a theory still commonly discussed by some conspiracy theorists on social media.
“Alexandre Bissonnette acted alone,” Jacques said, adding that Belkahadir had no links to Bissonnette.
The sentencing hearing will continue on Thursday with more evidence from the Crown. Since Bissonnette pleaded guilty last month, there was no trial. Most of the evidence gathered by prosecutors will be revealed during the sentencing phase.
The maximum sentence Bissonnette could face is 150 years — consecutive 25-year sentences for each of the six first-degree murder convictions. Bissonnette’s lawyer has said he will recommend a sentence of 25 years.
One video shows Azzeddine Soufiane rushing toward Bissonnette near the archway in an attempt to tackle him. He almost succeeded.