As police cruisers raced to respond to reports of a shooting in the small community of Portapique, Nova Scotia, last Saturday night, they turned off the dark Highway 2 running parallel to the shores of Cobequid Bay and plunged southbound into the even darker depths of Portapique Beach Road.

Only, on this night it wasn’t so dark.

Flames roaring from fully engulfed houses lit up the area. Bodies lay in the road. Moments earlier, great blasts split the night with the sound of what residents now believe was the explosion of burning gas tanks.

Officers in this Nova Scotia community had just come across the beginning of a trail of death and destruction that would, by its end, be unmatched in modern Canadian history.

Gabriel Wortman’s killing began here, in this quiet neighbourhood — a community with no street lights and homes set back from the road, cradled by the woods around them, where only 100 residents or so live year-round.

It started with an argument and the assault of his girlfriend. It ended 13 hours later and 100 kilometres away, when Wortman stopped to put gas in the car he’d stolen from a woman he’d just killed.

On Friday, after five long days of partial answers, the RCMP laid out the facts they have put together in the killing of 22 people in northern Nova Scotia, an act carried out by a 51-year-old denturist.

The narrative — drawn together from the accounts of police, survivors and others — is chilling.

***

Wortman and his longtime girlfriend got into an argument Saturday night. They’d had bad fights before, according to friends. This one escalated into something else. Wortman assaulted the woman and bound her.

At some point, she was able to get free and flee into the woods.

It was later that a 911 call came in about a shooting in the area.

Police arrived to a chaotic scene. They found a man who said he had been shot while driving, by someone in a passing vehicle “that looked like a police vehicle.”

“Just imagine,” said Tom Taggart, a councillor with the municipality of Colchester County, which includes Portapique. “Imagine the panic, the fear and the anxiety the residents and the police trying to protect them must’ve felt.”

Taggart said he spoke to one resident who described the scene as “like a war zone.”

Authorities set up a perimeter. The officers on scene would be joined by paramedics, a tactical team, canine units, air support and a hostage negotiator.

After speaking with witnesses, it didn’t take long for police to establish who their suspect was.

Wortman’s home and garages, along with three vehicles on his property were ablaze.

“We also learned that the gunman was in possession of a pistol and long-barrelled weapons,” Supt. Darren Campbell recounted Friday. “We learned that he was also known to own several vehicles that looked like police vehicles.”

They began to look through the heavily wooded neighbourhood for Wortman, not knowing if he was alive or if he might have died in the flames engulfing his home.

Bodies of victims, meanwhile, were spread about: Two in a burning A-frame house on the water; five in the cul-de-sac at the end of the drive; and, most horrifically, six along the same 400-metre stretch of Orchard Beach Drive, which runs parallel to Portapique Beach Road.

Down the road from Wortman’s house, they would find John Zahl and Joanne Thomas dead, their home in flames.

In the Cobequid Court cul-de-sac at the end of the road, they would find Aaron Tuck, his 17-year-old daughter, Emily Tuck, and Jolene Oliver. Nearby, they would also find the bodies of Peter and Joy Bond.

At the top of Orchard Beach Drive, police would find Corrie Ellison, Dawn Madsen and Frank Gulenchyn and Greg and Jamie Blair.

Lisa McCully was shot in her yard. She had put her son and daughter — 10 and 12 years old — in the basement, it would later emerge, before going out to see what was happening. She was killed as she rounded the corner of her house.

Her two children and the Blairs’ two boys survived the massacre.

***

On the other side of the highway, John Hudson stepped out onto the front deck of his house on Saturday night and saw the glow of a massive fire lighting up the night sky over a kilometre away. He knew immediately what it was. Hudson had known Wortman for 15 years.

“I told my wife: ‘That’s Gabe’s house right there that’s burning.’”

Less than half an hour later, the glow intensified. As Hudson watched, he realized another fire was burning at the big A-frame house that John Zahl and Joanne Thomas had bought from one of his friends some years ago.

“At that time I could hear explosions,” said Hudson. “I figured ‘That’s got to be gas tanks going off.’ And I could hear a few (sounds) like gunshots going off and I thought, ‘I don’t know if that’s gunshots or something else that’s being burnt and then shooting off or whatever. But it certainly sounds like gunshots.’”

***

Brothers Clinton and Corrie Ellison had been visiting their father in Portapique that night when they heard a gunshot. They looked out the window and saw a fire in the distance.

Corrie went to investigate. He never returned.

Clinton would find his brother’s body on the side of the road, he later told CBC News.

“I got one more step closer and I could see blood, and he wasn’t moving. I shut my flashlight off, I turned around and I ran for my life in the dark.”

He hid in the woods until morning.

***

Sunday morning broke incongruously clear and blue in Portapique, shedding light on the police search that had been going on all night.

With the dawn came the authorities’ first break; Wortman’s girlfriend, who had escaped the previous night’s killings, had been found.

She told police that Wortman was wearing a Mountie uniform. She also told them he was driving a replica car. His vehicles hadn’t all been burning at the property. That was the point when Mounties alerted the public — via Twitter — to the killer in a cop car who was in their midst.

***

By then, Wortman was long gone. Early in the morning, he had driven 50 kilometres north up Highway 4, past Folly Lake, past the fading snow on Ski Wentworth, past the coronavirus-shuttered Wentworth Provincial Park.

As Highway 4 began to curve west, he turned off onto the loose dirt of Hunter Road. Five kilometres down that road, he pulled into the driveway of the house belonging to Sean McLeod and Alanna Jenkins, two correctional officers with whom he’d had some acquaintance in the past. McLeod and Wortman had, in fact, lived on the same street once.

McLeod and Jenkins met through their work in corrections and built a life together centred on family and friends, said McLeod’s daughter, Taylor Andrews.

She described McLeod and Jenkins as a couple so perfectly matched, they were practically the same person. “They both loved being outside, hunting, fishing, being with family and friends,” she said. “They loved going on vacations together. They went multiple times a year.”

Wortman killed them both and set their house on fire. Retired firefighter Tom Bagley, who lived up the road, had been on a walk when he saw the flames and came to help. Wortman killed him, too.

***

Wortman left McLeod’s place and headed back south, down Highway 4.

At some point, he stopped at a house along the highway. He knocked on the door. The people living there knew him and didn’t answer.

They called 911 and told police that Wortman was at their house, dressed in a police uniform, driving a police vehicle and carrying a long-barrelled weapon.

Eventually, Wortman gave up and went away, police said.

***

It was about 9:30 a.m. Sunday morning.

David and Heather Edwards walk their dog every morning. Usually, they went along the highway that runs in front of their house. Often, they would meet Lillian Hyslop, whom they’d befriended four or five years earlier.

But on this particular Sunday morning, David paused as they reached the laneway that led up to the highway. For whatever reason, he said, he turned left instead of right.

To their right, Lillian Hyslop walked along the highway. Five minutes further on, Heather stopped David near Wentworth Provincial Park. The couple wondered about the sound they’d just heard from the direction of the highway. It sounded like a gunshot.

***

After killing Hyslop as she was walking along the side of the road, Wortman turned left off Highway 4 onto Plains Road in Debert. He drove past small houses and a compact post office, on through toward Lancaster Crescent.

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Nurse Kristen Beaton was driving down Plains Road. Ahead of her was Heather O’Brien, another nurse. Police say Wortman pulled Beaton’s car over. He shot and killed her, before catching up to O’Brien and killing her at the corner of Lancaster Crescent.

***

Wortman drove past Truro and headed south down NS-102, toward Halifax.

Ahead of him, RCMP Consts. Chad Morrison and Heidi Stevenson, both out of the Enfield detachment, had been talking on the radio.

They were on the lookout for a man wearing the same uniform they were, driving a car that looked almost exactly the same.

Shubenacadie resident David Macrae said he was working in his kitchen Sunday morning when he suddenly heard a volley of gunfire outside.

“We’re used to hearing that during duck season. Guys come out and fire like there’s no tomorrow,” he said.

But it wasn’t duck season.

So Macrae wondered if someone had set off a bunch of fireworks. “I thought somebody got bored because we’re in quarantine,” he said.

It turned out to be Wortman.

Stevenson and Morrison were planning to meet up near where Highway 2 connects to Highway 224. Morrison got there first. He watched as an RCMP cruiser pulled up to him, assuming it was Stevenson. It wasn’t.

The gunman opened fire on Morrison, who was shot several times. The officer retreated into his car, telling dispatchers that he’d been hit and was going to seek medical help. He survived.

Stevenson wasn’t far away. Moments later, she arrived on the scene and collided head-on with the shooter along a highway roundabout. Both vehicles came to rest against a guardrail.

The gunman got out of his car, ran to the side of Stevenson’s vehicle and began to shoot, Eric Fisher, another nearby resident, told the Star.

He said he initially assumed the shooter was a cop because he was wearing dark trousers and a lighter shirt.

It wasn’t until later that he learned the truth.

Stevenson, a mother of two and a 23-year veteran of the force, died.

Wortman took her gun and magazines.

Passerby Joey Webber was out running a family errand. He was another person in the wrong place at the wrong time — Wortman killed him, set both police cars on fire, and took Webber’s silver SUV.

***

Gina Goulet worked out of her home in Shubenacadie.

She was a two-time cancer survivor. She loved fishing and her work as a denturist. She called it her “arts and crafts.”

She knew Wortman. He’d offered her a job in his clinic about a year ago, but she’d declined. On Sunday, close to 11 a.m., Wortman drove the short distance south down Highway 224 after killing Stevenson and Webber, entered Goulet’s home and killed her.

He changed out of the police uniform he’d been wearing and took Goulet’s car, a red Mazda 3, and left southbound on Highway 224.

But Goulet’s car was low on gas. Some 20 kilometres down the line, Wortman pulled into the Irving Big Stop gas station just outside of Enfield to fill up. Coincidentally, a tactical officer had also stopped to fill up his tank.

The officer recognized Wortman. Police said there was “an encounter,” and Wortman was shot dead at 11:26 Sunday morning, ending just over 13 hours of terror and confusion for a large part of northern Nova Scotia.

***

It’s been days since the rampage that stunned the country.

On Friday, as Canadians prepared to pay tribute to the lives lost in a virtual vigil, a warning about possible shootings in several Halifax suburbs rattled the fragile nerves of a wounded province.

Nova Scotia issued an emergency alert on Friday advising people to shelter in place after reports of shots fired in Hammonds Plains, Glen Arbour and Hubley — northwest of Halifax’s core. The Mounties later said the report in Glen Arbour was “noise from a construction site” and that there was no evidence of gunfire in the other communities.

This emergency alert came after authorities were criticized for not issuing a similar one over the weekend to inform the public of the danger posed by the gunman’s rampage.

It’s clear people here have wounds to heal, and it’s also clear the healing has been made all the more difficult by the fact the COVID-19 pandemic deprives them of the comforting contact of others.

It’s evident in their altered body language: A hand, reaching out, quickly withdrawn. A step forward, quickly retracted.

Cees van den Hoek owns one of the antique stores in Great Village. He’s been working the past few days on refurbishing the old United Church. He’d planned to move his antique store there, but he understands — at least for now — it has a greater, more pressing purpose.

He knows people need a focal point for their grief.

He arranged a brief ceremony Friday night at the church: A beautiful, old white building that climbs three storeys.

Around the front steps, was a makeshift memorial of wreaths, hearts and Nova Scotia flags pinned to upright wooden stands. Flowers were laid. A roadside sign with huge letters: “We are in this together.”

On the ground, painted orange, were footprints to help people with their social distancing.

A handful of locals stopped to watch and listen while the old church’s bells tolled for the 22 victims.

The bell-ringer was van den Hoek’s son — not the most experienced, admits his father.

But the bell began on time and rang for a minute straight as those in attendance stood silently.

Heads rested on shoulders, people gazed up — past the steeple of the wooden church and beyond.

The paint was cracked and peeling at the top of the old church. But the foundation is strong.

With files from Douglas Quan, Ted Fraser and The Canadian Press

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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