David Westlake is an incredibly lucky man who still wonders what saved him when two Mounties mistaken him for a murderer and opened fire. On the morning of April 19, 2020, the emergency management coordinator was at the fire station in Onslow, NS, as the fire chief received people who had been evacuated from nearby Portapique, NS, where a gunman killed 13 people the night before. At that time, the killer was still free and his excitement was not over. He would have killed a total of 22 people before being shot by police later that day.
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The story goes on under the ad At 10:17 a.m., as Westlake was talking to an RCMP officer parked in front of the building, he watched in disbelief as a car stopped about 50 feet away and two men appeared with rifles. As they both targeted him, he made a dash for the firehall. “I remember one shot sounding like an explosion and then another that was very loud, and I’m moving right now,” Westlake said in a public inquiry into the worst mass shooting in modern Canadian history. The two gunmen were RCMP officers who mistakenly assumed that Westlake was the killer, mainly because he was wearing a yellow and orange reflective vest that matched the police description of what the suspect was wearing. Westlake’s dramatic account of what happened that day was given to an investigator on June 15, 2021. The publication Monday of a document containing excerpts from that interview marks the first time the public has heard Westlake’s version of events. “Do not ask me which deity had their hand on my shoulder that day and made sure it was not my time,” Westlake said in the interview.
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The investigative document also underscores the confusion faced by RCMP officers as they chased the killer for more than 100 kilometers. Two Mountains shot dead him at a gas station north of Halifax at 11:26 a.m. The story goes on under the ad As for Westlake, he said he still could not believe he had escaped with his life, although close communication had not damaged his sense of humor. “I was just a fat guy in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing a vest,” he told investigators. “I have never had a bad time with the two people who pulled the trigger. I want to meet them. “I want to ask them how they lost, because I can not hide behind telephone poles.” Trending Stories
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However, the document raises puzzling questions about the RCMP, which has said little about the near-fatal blunder. Shortly before Const. Terry Brown and Const. Dave Melanson appeared on Onslow, Westlake was standing in front talking to the RCMP Const. Dave Gagnon, who was behind the wheel of a spotted cruiser, a vehicle almost identical to the escape car used by the killer. Both Brown and Melanson told investigators they did not see Gagnon in the car. Before the two officers jumped out of the Nissan Altima without a signal, Melanson repeatedly tried to use a police radio to report what they were seeing. But instead of getting a clear signal for transmission, Melanson said the radio was “blocked”, which meant the frequency was blocked by too many users.
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The story goes on under the ad The Serious Crisis Response Team, the Nova Scotia Police Surveillance Service, published a report in March 2021 that acquitted both officers of any offenses. He concluded that the police had good reason to believe that they had the killer in their sights and that they had dropped their weapons “in order to prevent further deaths or serious injuries”. The independent agency also drew attention to the blocked radios. Melanson said he, like Brown, believed the man in the reflective vest was the killer. “I have my carbine in the press and I shout at him: ‘Show me your hands!’ Brown told investigators last month. “And he looks at me and then falls behind the car, and I was sure he was taking a gun? And I thought he was going to kill us. “I thought he was going to kill others. And he started running.” Westlake, however, told investigators he did not hear anyone say, “Show me your hands.” He said the only thing he heard, apart from the shootings, was someone say, “Get down!” Also, eight people living near the fireplace told investigators what they saw that day, and none of them reported hearing anyone say, “Show me your hands!” In all, investigators found that Brown fired four rounds at Westlake and Melanson fired once. Two cartridges pierced one of the station garage doors and damaged a fire truck inside. A third lap struck a roadside sign and another struck the side of the fire station. The fifth round struck a stone monument near the door that Westlake used to escape. The story goes on under the ad As for Gagnon – the cruiser – the document says he tried to use his radio to notify the other two officers of his identity, saying: “Guys, point your guns at me.” But the transcript from that day’s broadcast indicates that the broadcast was not completed. All that was recorded was Gagnon saying: “You got it – Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!” and “Who are you shooting at?” This is Gagnon! “
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When the shooting stopped, Gagnon got out of his vehicle with his hands up. After a brief exchange with the other two officers, he and Melanson went inside the station, where Westlake told them that no one had been injured. Neither Brown nor Melanson controlled the others inside the fire department, including Fire Chief Greg Moises, Deputy Chief of Staff Darrell Curry and displaced Richard Ellison, whose son Corey had been killed in Port. Westlake would later recall spotting an RCMP cruiser with a black push bar at the front passing by the firehall at 10:07 a.m. until they sent a tweet at 10:17 a.m. – around the same time that the car without a signal arrived at the fire station. The story goes on under the ad There is no indication that Gagnon saw the suspect’s car. This Canadian Press report was first published on April 11, 2022. – With archives from Michael Tutton in Halifax. © 2022 The Canadian Press
