A day after his horrific killing spree tore apart several tiny communities in northern Nova Scotia, the true scope of Gabriel Wortman’s crimes began to emerge.

Details started to surface Monday about the lives cut short by a gunman’s rampage — lives of service: A teacher, two nurses, two correctional officers, parents and their daughter; all victims in Canada’s deadliest mass killing.

And onto that gruesome tableau — one that stretched across 16 different crime scenes — another chilling element: The description of how this man gunned down a Mountie while dressed like an RCMP officer himself.

The RCMP have said there are at least 19 victims, and say that death toll might yet rise when they can more closely examine the five properties that were burned during the attacks in northern Nova Scotia.

Area residents prevented by the coronavirus pandemic from gathering to grieve together must take comfort in the massive outpouring of online support from across the country.

Questions — anguished questions from families and neighbours — remain unanswered. Specifically, why would a 51-year-old denturist, who apparently wanted to be a Mountie as a teen, embark on a killing crusade that would ultimately result in him killing an RCMP officer?

If the police know what set Wortman off, they’re still playing it close to the vest. They have said that his actions were “at least in part, very random in nature,” but also said the fact that he drove a replica RCMP cruiser and wore at least part of what looked like an RCMP uniform points to premeditation.

Eric Fisher, a resident of the small farming community of Shubenacadie, N.S., was on Facebook Sunday morning between 10:30 and 11 a.m. reading about a gunman on the loose, when he heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire outside. He glanced out his kitchen window, which overlooks a highway roundabout, and saw what appeared to be two police cruisers that had collided on the ramp.

At the time, he thought it was an officer — wearing dark trousers and a lighter shirt — who ran over to the side of one of the vehicles and fired several more rounds into it.

“Apparently it wasn’t a police officer,” he said later. “It was the man on the loose.”

And the target, he would later learn, was Const. Heidi Stevenson, a veteran member of the RCMP.

As he turned away to dial 911, Fisher said he saw what looked like a civilian vehicle approach the two cars that had collided. The driver got out, presumably to provide assistance. When Fisher turned back, the third vehicle was gone. A fire had broken out by the first two cars, quickly engulfing them. Police later confirmed that after the gunman’s own vehicle — the replica RCMP cruiser — became undrivable, he used other civilian vehicles to escape police.

A short time later, Wortman was dead; intercepted by police at an Irving gas station outside of Enfield, N.S., ending a 12-hour reign of terror that began 100 kilometres away in Portapique.

Lisa McCully, a teacher at Debert Elementary School lived on Orchard Beach Drive, across from a property owned by Wortman. He also owned a house on Portapique Beach Road, further to the west. Greg and Jamie Blair, a happily married couple who did everything together, owned the house next to McCully.

When police responded to firearms calls Saturday night, Wortman’s neighbours — McCully and the Blairs — were dead, and he was missing.

On Sunday morning, 50 kilometres away in Wentworth, the home of correctional officers Alanna Jenkins and Sean McLeod on Hunter Road was on fire. Jenkins and McLeod were both dead, as was Tom Bagley, a retired firefighter who owned a house across the street.

Lillian Hyslop was also killed. She owned a house further south in Wentworth on Station Rd.

About thirty kilometres south of Wentworth, near Debert, N.S., police said Wortman killed a person in a silver Volkswagen sedan.

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At some point, two nurses, Heather O’Brien and Kristen Beaton were also killed, as was Gina Goulet, a denturist who owned a place in Shubenacadie.

“We’ll never have an opportunity to interview the subject,” RCMP Chief Supt. Chris Leather told a news conference Monday, “but we can say his ability to move around the province undetected was surely greatly benefited by the fact that he had a ... vehicle that looked identical in every way to a marked police car, and beyond that, he was wearing a police uniform, which was either a very good fabrication of, or actually a police uniform. That surely contributed to his ability to circulate.”

In Portapique, most residents who knew the killer saw him as an affable, house-proud seasonal neighbour who loved spending time at his sprawling log home.

Neighbour Nancy Hudson said she met him about 18 years ago when he bought the property on Portapique Beach Road.

“He was very jovial,” she said. “But there is another side to Gabe. He had some issues, especially with his girlfriend.”

Hudson said she and her husband used to socialize with Wortman and detected “some underlying issues that I think he had with his relationship. It was a red flag ... (What happened on the weekend) wasn’t a surprise to some degree, but not to this extreme.”

Hudson told the Canadian Press that Wortman was obsessed with his girlfriend. “Just being jealous about things with her. I think that’s where things got in the way ... She was a beautiful girl.”

Kathy Pendergast, a former girlfriend of Wortman’s who attended Riverview High School in New Brunswick with him, said he was “ a normal teenager” who loved dirt bikes and talked about joining the RCMP.

The last time she spoke to Wortman was in 1990. She says he mentioned that he was attending the University of New Brunswick. “We will never know what was in Gabriel’s head or what triggered him this past weekend.”

“What Gabe did is unexplainable and incomprehensible. My old classmates at Riverview High students are just mind blown and heart broken over this,” said Pendergast. “He was just a quiet, awkward teenager. Fast forward to 2020 nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors in someone’s house or what goes through someone’s mind.”

Media questioned RCMP as to why they chose to use their Twitter account to alert the public to the danger rather than the province’s emergency alert system.

Premier Stephen McNeil said Monday the system wasn’t used because no request was received.

McNeil said the province’s Emergency Measures Organization has to be asked to issue an alert and that didn’t happen, but McNeil wasn’t about to place blame on the RCMP.

“This is a province in mourning. There will be lots of questions, but I can tell you I’m not going to second guess what someone with the organization did or didn’t do at this moment in time,” he said.

Chief Supt. Leather said Twitter works instantly and the agency has thousands of followers, so officials felt it was a “superior way to communicate this ongoing threat.”

But he said the question of why the provincial alert system wasn’t used is a good one.

SM Steve McKinley is a Halifax-based reporter for the Star. Reach him via email: stevemckinley@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @smckinley1

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