Photo: The Canadian Press
Commission Adviser Roger Burrell provided information on the police supplies used by Gabriel Wortman in the Commission’s investigation into the massacre of mass killings in rural Nova Scotia on 18/19 April 2020 in Halifax on Monday, 25 April 2022. Wortman, dressed. as an RCMP officer and driving a replica of a police cruiser that killed 22 people. THE CANADIAN PRESS / Andrew Vaughn
A public investigation found Monday that many people knew about a copy of a patrol car owned by the shooter during the mass shooting in Nova Scotia, but did not tell police about the suspicious activities.
The killer accurately recreated a fully marked RCMP Ford Taurus – full of black push-up tape and Mountie stickers – before driving it during the riot of April 18-19, 2020, which led to 22 killings in 13 hours.
Commission lawyer Amanda Bird on Monday presented a summary of how the killer acquired four decommissioned Ford Taurus police cars in 2019 from the federal government’s online auction site known as GCSurplus.
She also told the investigation that there were no indications that anyone had seen the fully marked car or photos of it before the riot was reported to police.
“Many civilian witnesses told the RCMP in their statements after the events that they either saw or knew about this remark …. The Commission currently has no evidence to suggest that any of these witnesses reported the vehicle to the police. “Byrd said.
The summary of the investigation into the killer’s police equipment says people familiar with the tagged car include the killer’s wife and some of her relatives, friends, neighbors, a lawyer, clients at the killer’s dental clinic and contractors who worked on his property. Portapique, NS.
It is also said that a number of witnesses were told by the armed man that it was legal to have such a vehicle, and he assured them that he had checked with the authorities and planned to use it in parades, hire him for film productions or turn it into a monument to the fallen members of the RCMP.
The Penal Code says it is illegal to impersonate a police officer or use police equipment to impersonate a police officer, but remains silent on whether anyone can simply own a marked vehicle for personal display.
Max Liberator, manager of the GCSurplus warehouse in Dartmouth, NS, testified Monday that the killer often visited the warehouse to buy police cars.
He also told the inquiry that he remembered the shooter showing him photos of the decommissioned replica of the RCMP cruiser. “We just talked outside (the warehouse). We once asked him … why do you like to buy these cars?” he said during his testimony.
Liberatore said during cross-examination by Tara Miller, a lawyer representing members of the victims’ family, that the killer had told him he intended to use the cruiser’s replica for parades, and as a result had not reported the matter to the RCMP. Miller asked if Liberatore had ever received any training on how to recognize and report suspicious behavior, and he said no.
Documents released by the commission on Monday also say the killer arrived at a Mercedes dealership with his wife before the mass shooting in a fully marked police vehicle. The car dealership’s service manager told an investigating investigator that he had asked the killer how he could move like that, and the perpetrator replied that it was “just a hobby” and “it is known” that he was doing it. ” The witness did not report the incident to the police.
Several members of Lisa Banfield’s family said they had questioned Gabriel Wortman about the car’s replica.
Charles Banfield, Lisa Banfield’s brother, told the RCMP on April 19, 2020, that he had asked the killer what he was doing with a car replica. James Banfield, another of the Banfield brothers, said the killer had told him he planned to put a heart on the vehicle and make it a memorial to the fallen officers.
In a statement to the RCMP on April 28, 2020, Robert Macaskill, a friend of one of the killer’s victims, Aaron Tuck, said he and Tuck had discussed the decommissioned replica of the RCMP cruiser and he had spoken to Tuck to call Crime Stoppers to report on this. The commission’s summary says: “Mr Tuck said he could not report because the perpetrator had threatened him.”
There were also sightings of the vehicle moving around Portapique, according to the summary of the investigation.
It notes that a friend of Lisa McCully’s told the RCMP “she saw the perpetrator drive to his Portapique property in the fully marked decommissioned replica of the RCMP cruiser.” McCully was one of the victims in Portapic.
At the time of the mass shooting, it was not explicitly illegal under provincial law to have a copy of a police vehicle on display.
New legislation in Nova Scotia, which takes effect in May, will make it illegal for police vehicles and equipment to be owned by unauthorized people.
However, Robert Pineo, a lawyer representing 14 of the victims’ 22 families, said in an interview Monday that he believes changes to the Penal Code and Canadian provincial law are needed to ban the possession of marked police cars. from the general public.
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