Residents say emergency alert during shooting spree could have saved lives as gunman drove around the province for over 12 hours

This article is more than 4 months old

This article is more than 4 months old

As Canada reels from mass shooting that killed at least 22 people, residents in Nova Scotia have asked why authorities failed to send an emergency alert as a gunman posing as a police officer drove around the province for more than 12 hours.

A week before Canada’s worst-ever mass shooting, all residents of the province received a mobile phone alert asking them to remain at home due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many argue that a similar warning during the shooting spree could have saved lives.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said on Wednesday that the active shooter situation over the weekend was “dynamic” and “fluid” as officers scrambled to locate the gunman, delaying an emergency message broadcast to the public.

“We were in the process of preparing an alert when the gunman was shot and killed by the RCMP,” Chief Superintendent Chris Leather told reporters.

The first reports of gunfire came late on Saturday, and police officers were dispatched to a home in the town of Portapique. At 11.32pm, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent out a tweet asking residents to “stay in their homes with doors locked at this time”.

RCMP, Nova Scotia (@RCMPNS) #RCMPNS is responding to a firearms complaint in the #Portapique area. (Portapique Beach Rd, Bay Shore Rd and Five Houses Rd.) The public is asked to avoid the area and stay in their homes with doors locked at this time.

But for the following eight hours, the Twitter account was silent, even as gunman Gabriel Wortman prowled the province in a replica police vehicle. Police believe the first victims were targeted, but Wortman went on to attack anyone on his path.

It wasn’t until 8.02am on Sunday that the police sent another tweet, warning that there was an “active shooter situation” and that Wortman was probably disguised as an RCMP officer. Residents were once again asked to stay home and lock their doors.

But by then, a number of residents – many of whom had heard about the incident the night before – assumed police had cleared up the situation.

Nick Beaton told CTV news that as he and his pregnant wife Kristen started their day, in the town of Truro, they believed the incident had long passed.

“We thought he was taken care of,” Nick Beaton said. By the time he realized the gunman was still at large, Kristen had left to begin her shift as a care worker. Nick desperately texted a picture of Wortman to his wife – but she never received he message. Her body was recovered later on Sunday.

“If I had known he was on the loose I would have not let my wife leave the house that day,” Beaton told CTV.

Lillian Hyslop was also killed by Wortman as she walked along a familiar stretch of country road on Sunday morning. Friends have also said that an alert would have kept Hyslop at home.

On Tuesday, Nova Scotia’s premier, Stephen McNeil, said the province had activated the emergency management office by Sunday morning – which includes preparing for the release of an emergency alert to all telephones in the province – but the RCMP never requested an alert be sent.

“In this case, the RCMP has to ask for that alert to go out, because quite frankly, we need the information from them. McNeil said, having previously told reporters that we wasn’t prepared to “second-guess” decisions that were made in a rapidly evolving situation.

Such comments have angered many locals. “If that is not an emergency, what is? The death toll is rising. He has not been taken into custody. At what point do you decide that people need to be warned?” said Maggie Rahr, a freelance investigative journalist in Nova Scotia, told the Guardian.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Press has reported that the US consulate in Nova Scotia emailed citizens on Sunday, warning of an active shooter. “It’s our protocol – when emergencies occur – to alert US citizens in the area of the situation,” said a consulate spokeswoman, Marcia R Seitz-Ehler.

The RCMP previously defended their decision to use social media channels on Facebook and Twitter for their “instantaneous” way of communicating.

Nova Scotia shooting: death toll rises to 22 as more victims identified Read more

“We’re aware that we have thousands of followers in Nova Scotia and felt that it was a way, a superior way to communicate this ongoing threat,” Ch Supt Leather told reporters on Monday.

Police have yet to determine what motivated the shooting spree, and the death toll is expected to rise still further as 16 crime scenes are investigated.

The head RCMP initially said Wortman was not “known to police”, but court documents show that in 2002 he pleaded guilty to assaulting a 15-year-old boy in the parking lot of a denture clinic.

Wortman was ordered to undergo counselling for anger management and banned from possessing firearms, explosives and any prohibited weapon for nine months.