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Since then, questions have persisted about who took the photo, when it was taken and how it made its way onto social media even as the police were still hunting what they believed was a second shooter somewhere in the downtown core.

The Citizen has obtained a series of photographs, spanning a period of less than two minutes, that show the terrible drama of the shooting at the War Memorial, including the last known photograph of Cpl. Cirillo taken before Zehaf-Bibeau started firing seconds later.

These photos are not the work of a professional photographer, nor are they grabbed from security camera footage. Instead, they were taken by a French visitor as he waited with his wife to hop on a tour bus. From the first casual snapshots of the Memorial to the deliberate photographs of a killer in action, these shocking images fill in important gaps in the record. They help us track Zehaf-Bibeau’s movements and actions at the War Memorial, hint at Cirillo’s desperate attempt to flee his killer and show the first frantic efforts of passersby to save his life.

The country’s first look at home-grown terrorist Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, shared initially on social media in the hours after the attack while police were still trying to determine how many active shooters they were seeking, appeared to show him in the act of gunning down Cpl. Nathan Cirillo on Oct. 22, 2014.

His focused eyes stared directly at the camera

A scarf covered his face, he was holding a rifle and the stonework behind him looked familiar, as if it could be part of the National War Memorial. But where in fact was he? Who took the picture and when? And how did it find its way onto social media after the shooting?