Canada’s worst shooting examined
Report says police worsened rampage in rural Nova Scotia
OTTAWA, Ontario — Poor police command and communication, confusion and rigid thinking among officers contributed to the death toll in Canada’s worst mass shooting — a 13-hour rampage in April 2020 in rural Nova Scotia by a man disguised as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer that left 23 people dead, including the shooter, a public inquiry found Thursday.
Among other missteps, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a federal force, dismissed eyewitness reports that an armed man was driving what looked like an authentic police vehicle and chose not to transmit emergency warnings to local residents on their cellphones, according to the commission that held the inquiry.
Michael Duheme, the interim commissioner of the mounted police, said the force had already established a group to look at the inquiry’s recommendations.
In addition to documenting the chaos and confusion surrounding the rampage, the commission called for changes in how violence against women is handled, a revamping of the mounted police, tightening of Canada’s gun laws and finding ways to reduce “unhealthy conceptions of masculinity” in Canadian society.
Long before the shooter, Gabriel Wortman, a wealthy maker of dentures from Halifax, Nova Scotia, who was 51, went on his killing and arson spree, there were several worrying signals, the commission found.
Despite not holding a firearms license, he used intermediaries to obtain at least five firearms — most of them
smuggled from the United States — as well as a large cache of ammunition and a hand grenade, according to the report.
At least three people reported his illegal stockpile to police, which led to only a cursory inspection.
Wortman had also acquired four decommissioned mounted-police cruisers from the federal government’s online asset disposal site; he restored one, complete with the force’s logos and an emergency light bar. Along with the cars, he had also gradually accumulated various parts of RCMP uniforms.
Wortman, the commission found, became increasingly agitated as the pandemic spread and public health measures closed his business and shut Nova Scotia’s border to the rest of
Canada.
He stockpiled food and cash and moved in with Lisa Banfield, his partner, to their cottage in the hamlet of Portapique, Nova Scotia, on the picturesque Bay of Fundy.
At some point on the evening of April 18, Wortman brutally assaulted Banfield, placed a handcuff on one of her wrists and locked her in the back of his replica police cruiser.
She was able to free herself from the handcuff and the car, escaping into the woods. But starting about 10 p.m., Wortman went through the village shooting people, eventually killing 13, and setting fire to several buildings.
The commission found that several witnesses who called 911 identified Wortman as the shooter and
warned the police that he was driving what appeared to be an authentic police vehicle. The commission found that the information about the car was not given to officers heading to the village, nor was it recorded in log books.
Wortman drove out of the village through an unmarked farm lane. But the commission found that the police continued to discount the idea that he was driving a look-alike police vehicle or that he had left Portapique until 9:40 a.m. the next morning, when reports filtered in of killings far from the village.
The commission blamed the delay on “a flawed decision-making process, particularly the failure to consider alternative scenarios based on the information about the replica RCMP cruiser
and mounting reports about the perpetrator and his firearms.”
The handful of officers on the scene in Portapique knew little of the area’s geography and had to rely on their personal cellphones for maps — a feature not available on phones issued by the police, according to the commission.
Adding to the danger, the commission found, police officers were indecisive about issuing a warning alert that would go to all phones and instead made Twitter and Facebook posts that captured little of the danger. The first one said only that the force was “responding to a firearms complaint.”
The commission found that throughout, officers failed to interview witnesses or conduct house-to-house searches.
Wortman’s trail of death and destruction did not come to an end until 11:25 a.m., when police shot and killed him at a gas station where he had pulled in to fuel a car stolen from one of his victims.
The replica cruiser he had been driving had been involved in an apparently intentional head-on collision with an actual police vehicle, and Wortman then killed the officer driving that vehicle, the commission said. He burned both vehicles. In the back seat of the replica cruiser was the body of a passerby from another vehicle, an SUV that he had stolen.
The commission also faulted police for their treatment of the victims’ family members, including threatening some by pointing firearms at them.