Untold story of the shooting on Parliament Hill
THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE PARLIAMENT HILL SHOOTING
There are days when it’s hard to be a hero. Just ask Curtis Barrett.
Two years ago, the RCMP corporal shot Michael Zehaf-Bibeau in the head in Parliament’s Hall of Honour, just minutes after the 32-year-old Zehaf-Bibeau had fired three bullets into the back of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, an unarmed member of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, who was posted at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.
An Ontario Provincial Police report into the terror attack on Parliament Hill on Oct. 22, 2014, concluded that Zehaf-Bibeau “presented a serious and imminent threat to the lives of all persons inside Centre Block,” including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the entire Conservative caucus meeting in the Reading Room, just off the Hall of Honour.
The report concluded that the House of Commons’ former sergeant-at-arms, Kevin Vickers, and Barrett “fired their weapons and neutralized the threat.”
But while Vickers was hailed as a hero by the nation and appointed Canada’s ambassador to Ireland, Barrett’s contribution was buried, redacted and generally forgotten, leading him into a downward spiral of posttraumatic stress.
After two years, the RCMP has finally recognized the valour of Barrett, and the three other officers who walked into gunfire that day — he will receive the Star of Courage from the Governor General at a ceremony next Friday. But Barrett’s story is a cautionary tale about how this country treats those of its sons and daughters who put themselves at great peril to keep the rest of us safe.
On the morning of Oct. 22, 2014, Curtis Barrett, a robust 34-year-old from Labrador City, N.L., was posted at the Vehicle Screening facility at the foot of Parliament Hill, where he worked as an explosives detection officer.
The former Canadian Forces combat engineer was on a break when he overheard a female officer announce on the radio: “There’s a man. He’s got a gun.”
Barrett and an RCMP colleague climbed into a marked cruiser and headed toward the Peace Tower.
Barrett exited his vehicle before it had come to a stop and ran to the front door of Centre Block, where a number of RCMP officers had gathered.
He called for three others to join him in an “IARD” — Incident Active Response Deployment — a diamond formation used in life-threatening situations where waiting for backup might result in more deaths.
With Sgt. Richard Rozon on his left, Const. Martin Fraser on his right and Cpl. Danny Daigle positioned as rearguard, he walked up the steps of Centre Block and into the rotunda.
Barrett said he smelled gunpowder immediately and knew shots had been fired.
He saw members of the House of Commons Security Services signalling at him and pointing towards the far end of the Hall of Honour, near the Library of Parliament.
All four officers had their firearms drawn and, as they continued moving forward, Barrett noticed Vickers taking cover against a wall.
After seeing movement by the library doors, they heard a loud gunshot. As they moved forward, there were more shots and Barrett says he felt the percussion and shock wave of a bullet going past him.
Zehaf-Bibeau did not appear to know Vickers was there and the distraction provided by the RCMP officers allowed the sergeant-atarms to break cover and fall to the floor as he was shooting at Zehaf-Bibeau.
At the same time, Barrett was firing as he walked toward the gunman.
When the RCMP corporal was within a few feet of Zehaf-Bibeau, he started to go down.
As the OPP report noted: “(Barrett) strongly believes that all his 15 shots hit the gunman. The one round he can physically remember is the shot going into the gunman’s head.”
The report concluded that the body was “perforated” by 15 of the 31 shots that hit him.
Zehaf-Bibeau landed at Barrett’s feet and the explosives expert checked the gunman’s hands and wrists to see if there were any switches to detonate a bomb. Instead, he found a large knife attached with a piece of rope, which he cut before holstering his weapon and handcuffing him.
Once he was secured, Barrett stood up and patted down Vickers to see if he was hit. Nothing was said but the two men hugged, producing one moment of light relief, as one of the medals from Vickers’ ceremonial dress stuck to the Velcro of Barrett’s body armour.
Vickers walked off into folklore after telling parliamentarians: “I put him down.” He became the mildmannered former RCMP officer who had single-handedly put an end to a terrorist’s rampage on Parliament Hill, despite the efforts he made in a statement to point out the courage of other security personnel and his pride at being part of the team that had brought down Zehaf-Bibeau.
He was, and is, a Canadian hero, placing himself in the line of fire to save innocent lives.
But if you had polled Canadians at the time, nine out of 10 people, including members of Barrett’s family and his then-girlfriend, would have agreed that Vickers had acted on his own to end the threat.
That belief stung the man who had felt Zehaf-Bibeau’s bullets passing so close to his head.
But there was nothing he could do. As a senior RCMP officer told him: “The Vickers train has left the station. You might not be happy but that’s the way it is.”
Barrett’s day didn’t end with the gun battle in the Hall of Honour. There were rumours of another gunman in East Block, the building adjacent to Centre Block.
He was joined by an RCMP colleague and two Ottawa Police Service officers. They walked east toward the Senate, clearing offices along the way.
He was trying to move one woman, who was cowering below her desk, when his attention was caught by her desktop television and a media report saying a soldier had been shot.
“At that point I thought I’d killed a Canadian soldier,” the army veteran said in an interview with the National Post. “I didn’t know about Nathan Cirillo. I thought I was going to fall over.”
However, the adrenalin kicked back in when the team heard what sounded like shots coming from an office above them.
They moved toward the commotion and as they stood outside the office door, they radioed in that shots were being fired in the Senate. When the door was finally opened, they found themselves face to face with the source of the noise, an RCMP emergency response team coming through the roof.
“I almost shot my own people that day,” Barrett said. “It was so close it was ridiculous. It’s a miracle we didn’t shoot each other.”
Barrett’s team passed through the tunnel connecting the Senate and the East Block, where they found an unarmed Senate security staff member guarding the NDP caucus, which had been evacuated there.
Barrett called out to NDP leader Tom Mulcair and told him that the gunman was dead.
“He asked how I knew and I said I’d shot him in the head. He hugged me and I spent the rest of the day protecting the NDP. I was gundrawn for over six hours.”
Once Barrett was relieved, and had handed off his gun and heavy armour, he was placed in a room where he had the surreal experience of watching as television networks repeatedly broadcast footage shot by then-Globe and Mail reporter Josh Wingrove of Barrett and his colleagues walking down the Hall of Honour, guns raised.
Finally, other RCMP officers interviewed Barrett on camera about the day’s events, and he was driven home.
It was the last contact he was to have with the RCMP for four days. The following week he attended a debriefing, during which he had to go to the bathroom to throw up.
From that meeting, he drove straight to Hamilton, Ont., to attend Nathan Cirillo’s funeral, which he said offered some closure — particularly when he was able to meet with the family and tell them what had happened. “We have sons who are the same age,” Barrett says, choking back emotion.
He arrived home from the funeral to more bad news, discovering his 10-year-old German Shepherd had collapsed and had to be put down.
“It was the day after Nathan Cirillo’s funeral and I was digging a hole in the backyard to bury my dog. I lost my s--t for the first time that day,” he says.
“I had to explain to my sons (aged 5 and 7 at the time) that their dog was dead and that Papa ‘had to go get a bad guy who killed a soldier.’ ”
Barrett was off work until January 2015 as the shooting was investigated. He said the lack of contact with the RCMP in the months following Oct. 22 was a “communication breakdown where everyone thought someone else was dealing with me.”
Barrett has since become involved in ensuring the RCMP is much better at dealing with mental health issues, but it is clear that as recently as two years ago, the culture inside Canada’s national police force was not sympathetic to members who had suffered in the line of duty.
“My doctor told me this is what leads to PTSD — the lack of followup. It’s why we have suicides,” said Barrett.
As press coverage of the shooting continued to focus on Vickers, Barrett’s mental health deteriorated.
“The whole world wasn’t buying into my story because it wasn’t the story in the media,” he said.
“Shooting a terrorist on Parliament Hill is not something that gives you PTSD. I’m so proud that no one else got shot. It went as well as it could have gone. But no one stood up for us. I broke my television when (Green party leader) Liz May said the RCMP is good at giving out tickets on Parliament Hill but not at stopping terrorists.”
(May gave a speech in the House of Commons in May 2015, criticizing the RCMP for stopping MPs on their way to the Hill but not noticing a man with a gun.)
“It was heartbreaking to hear that you’re a failure for not stopping this guy,” Barrett said.
He said his life went into a downward spiral — he stopped participating in Beaver Scouts with his sons and his relationship ended because his girlfriend said he was so caught up in his own issues.
“I was a bit of a mess,” he admits.
The feeling of being abandoned was reinforced when, reviewing his status almost a year after the event, the RCMP’s Health Services division said it had no record of Barrett being involved in the shooting.
“These are the people supposed to me looking after me. All the psychologist reports were lost. I lost my mind. I said: ‘How can you clear me to go back to work when you don’t know I was in a shooting?’ ”
He said he felt like the protagonist in the old Stan Rogers song: Macdonnell on the Heights, about Gen. Isaac Brock’s aide-de-camp, John Macdonnell, a hero of the Battle of Queenston Heights in the War of 1812. Rogers lamented that, despite his courage, “not one in 10,000 knows your name.”
Yet 18 months later, Barrett is in a new relationship, he has returned to duty in the RCMP’s bomb unit and feels he has his life back on track.
RCMP Health Services finally found the paperwork that diagnosed him with a post-traumatic stress injury, and in October 2015 he was placed on medical leave and sent to an Occupational Stress clinic in Ottawa. “That was the day my life started getting better,” he said. “It’s where I should have been going from day one. I go to treatment every week and I’m really good with it 90 per cent of the time.”
Barrett returned to active duty in June 2016. If there are any positives to emerge from his experience, it’s that he is now working with RCMP management to ensure members are looked after properly after traumatic events.
“I’m an explosives technician and I have PTSD. It’s OK to say you have it and then to deal with it. It’s when you don’t deal with it that stuff goes sideways,” he said.
Official recognition of Barrett’s selfless bravery, in the form of the Star of Courage, will go a long way to dealing with what troubles Canada’s loneliest hero.
IT’S WHEN YOU DON’T DEAL WITH IT THAT STUFF GOES SIDEWAYS.