The RCMP dog handler realized that the gunman he was looking for was the type of person who had such a strong intention to cause harm that he would shoot a family pet weighing no more than 20 pounds.
“This animal was painful to me because I went to other murder scenes, passion crimes, but never where would anyone express such anger,” Hubley testified Thursday in a public inquiry into Halifax looking at the April 2020 mass shootings.
“I thought it was extremely dangerous.”
The Blairs were among the 13 people killed in the rural subdivision. The couple’s two young sons had seen the death of their parents and managed to escape. When police arrived at the scene on the morning of April 19, 2020, they found Blair’s miniature wounded and waiting on the steps where one of its owners had been killed hours earlier.
Hubley and other RCMP officers were assessing the massacre during a “lull” as they evacuated homes and looked for signs of the killer.
The gunman was shot by police near a gas station in Enfield, NS (Eric Woolliscroft / CBC)
Const. Ben MacLeod, a member of the RCMP regular team, said the scene – which included two corpses on the side of a road – did not compare to any murder or sudden death he had ever witnessed.
“Revenge is a good word and bad is a good word … To do that was bad,” he said.
MacLeod had his own awareness of the man who caused the horror when he took Lisa Banfield, the gunman’s wife, after appearing to a neighbor around dawn.
The experience had many officers claiming that the gunman had committed suicide in the woods, MacLeod said, but their perspective changed when they saw the man’s partner, who was “upset” and nervous to be exposed as he got into a police vehicle.
“To see that she was still so scared he was looking for her, she clicked and made us think – she made me think – that she was still out there ready to finish,” MacLeod testified.
Hours later, Hubley and MacLeod confronted the killer at a gas station in Enfield, NS, and recounted together in a control panel the seconds that pushed them to shoot 23 bullets, killing Gabriel Wortman.
By that time, he had been free for more than 13 hours, had traveled nearly 200 kilometers and killed 22 people, including many unknowns, including a pregnant woman and an RCMP officer, Const. Heidi Stevenson. For much of the excitement, he was driving a decommissioned cruiser he had equipped to be identical to a real one.
Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19. Top row from left: Gina Gulett, Down Gulencin, Joulen Oliver, Frank Gulencin, Sean McLeod, Alana Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O’Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from the top: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joanne Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)
MacLeod also thought about the attention that the incident had brought to him and Hubley for the murder of the gunman, and the account of the last two years has caused their colleagues to respond first.
“We all fought. We saw a lot that night. Each of us just wanted to find him, we did everything we could to find him that night,” he said.
“We have spent two years of grief with the Nova Scotians, with the families of the victims who are here. We have lost one of our own, too, with Heidi. Life will never be the same for us.”
“The urgency was indescribable”
The search for the gunman became a racing match on April 19, when 911 calls came for a new shot in the Wentworth area, more than 20 miles north of Portapique. Hubley and MacLeod took off and were soon taken to a property in Glenholme, NS, where a couple called for help after watching the gunman get in their way. “Knowing what had happened in Portapique, knowing that he might have been there in Glenholme, the sense of urgency was indescribable,” Hubley said. He and MacLeod ended up together in the back of the emergency team’s regular vehicle as he approached the house. Hubley said he focused on keeping the German shepherd calm and evaluating on his phone the layout of the property, which was wooded and scattered with heavy equipment – which he considered as places to hide.
“Close but not close enough”
Before he and his dog could search for the suspect, RCMP’s voice was heard on the radio, informing them of new shootings on Plains Road in Debert, NS, where gunmen shot Kristen Beaton and Heather O ‘. Brien less than 10 km. Away.
“I remember feeling a little defeated when he found two more victims when it seemed like we were seconds behind him,” Hubley said.
At that point, Hubley and MacLeod took off together in a Suburban – MacLeod provided coverage and Hubley was behind the wheel. He estimated that they were traveling “as fast as this truck would go” with about 180 kilometers per hour most of the next hour.
They did not stay long in Debert, where other members were on stage. Hubley said there was “just a sense” that the gunman had moved on and was heading for a more densely populated area. Shortly afterwards, an observation was made on a secondary highway in the Brookfield area – closer to Halifax – and police tore down the main highway to the city, trying to determine the best location to catch the gunman.
Hubley speaks at the Mass Casualty Commission investigation in Halifax on Thursday, April 14, 2022. (Andrew Vaughan / Canadian Press)
All the while, they monitored police radio communications, trying to alert officers in Halifax and plan the best exit, they said. MacLeod said it was not uncommon for them to have to process a lot of information at once.
The updates coming on the radio included that two members were beaten – Const. Chad Morrison, who was wounded and survived, and Stevenson, who was later pronounced dead at gunpoint in Shubenacadie.
As they exited the main highway north of that scene, they came upon other RCMP officers who had set up a roadblock. They decided to continue on their way to the city, this time on the side highway, circling the nearby Enfield RCMP detachment as a precaution, knowing that the gunman was then targeting Mountis.
But it was creating a problem. They were burning with gas and Hubley said he knew if they were to be called to respond in the Halifax area where he usually was, they had to be prepared.
Surveillance footage from Elmsdale Petro-Canada shows the gunman at the petrol pump in front of members of the emergency response team around 11:16 a.m. AT on 19 April 2020. (Committee on Mass Losses)
They pulled on the Irving Big Stop to accelerate twice, stopping to ensure that members of the Halifax Regional Police Tactical Team stationed at the scene knew the suspect had last seen a silver SUV. They soon left for nearby Elsdale to follow up on a report of a sighting of a Sobeys in Truro that proved unfounded.
When they returned to the gas station, the goal was to fill up – but they said it was always their job to find the killer.
“We are used to it [having a feeling]as cops using intuition, say it as you wish. [We were] “Having this discussion, we think he’s close to us. Let’s stay in this area and stay mobile while trying to find him,” MacLeod said.
On Wednesday, the public inquiry heard the gunman pulled for the first time at a Petro-Canada in Elmsdale, near Enfield, in a pump opposite other members of the RCMP emergency response team. He left before they were recognized, the investigation was heard.
Hubley and MacLeod said they did not know this, did not know that the gunman was in the Big Stop when they entered and that they had no instructions to execute the suspect.
But they knew he could be in the area, and MacLeod planned to watch Hubley back at the pump.
Within seconds they fired.
MacLeod appears in the Mass Casualty Commission investigation into mass murder in rural Nova Scotia. (Andrew Vaughan / Canadian Press)
Getting out of his vehicle, Hubley said he checked the position of his pistol on his thigh, as usual, and observed the man sitting in a gray hatchback at a nearby pump.
“He was wearing a white T-shirt and he looked very sweaty, very depressed. I think I used the ‘animal’ to describe him. Whether he just lost a race or finished a big race, that was what he looked like,” Hubley said.
“He was breathing heavily, there was a lump in his head. There was blood coming from it. And what struck me most about that quarter of a second was that he had a wound that did not go away.”
He said the man’s appearance was so disturbing that he started pulling his gun and realized he was the gunman and called MacLeod, who was already on his way out of the Suburban.
Hubley shot the gunman as he sat in Gina Goulet’s stolen Mazda at 11:25 a.m. AT on April 19, 2020, at the Enfield Irving Big Stop. (Committee on Mass Accidents)
Hubley said he had spent time studying photos of the gunman nailed to the makeshift headquarters in Great Village, NS, early in his shift and identified him in the car.
“When I shouted ‘Benny, this is him!’ “He looked at me and I was already 100 percent sure it was him,” he said, adding that he started firing when he saw the gunman “make a jerky move” and that his right hand was raised with a black and silver pistol inside. .
“I thought he was going to shoot me,” Hubley said, adding that he fired until the gunman was “unable to shoot,” knowing from training that multiple rounds were needed to stop a threat.
Police respond to the gas station in Enfield, NS, on Sunday, April 19, 2020. …
