During the April 2020 mass shooting across the province, two RCMP officers fired five rounds that hit the Onslow Belmont Fire Hall in Colchester County while searching for the gunman. They pulled over a municipal employee in a safety vest standing next to an RCMP cruiser with their suspect, who they knew was driving a fake police car.
The Mass Casualties Commission leading the inquiry into the gunman’s rampage that killed 22 people has continued to release documents in recent weeks, even after public hearings ended.
Included is a January 2021 internal memo from the Nova Scotia RCMP’s Hazardous Incident Investigation Team (HOIT) that says a report into the Onslow shooting, commissioned by provincial police, had multiple “inaccuracies and omissions.”
Onslow firefighters Darrell Currie and Greg Muise, who were inside the room during the shooting, have long criticized that report by the Nova Scotia Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) and the decision not to charge the two involved Mounties.
“It was just another piece of evidence to say that the SIRT report was wrong,” Currie said in an interview alongside Muise. “It just confirmed what I had thought all along.”
The RCMP memo criticizes an expert report authored by Vancouver-based consultant Joel Johnston, who was asked to review all the evidence gathered by the SIRT and determine whether the officers’ use of force was appropriate.
Surveillance video from the Onslow Belmont Fire Hall on April 19, 2020, shows RCMP Const. Terry Brown in the back of the building. The timecode in the tracking video is a quick 10 minutes. (Mass Accident Commission)
The Johnston report said on April 19, 2020, RCMP Const. Terry Brown and Const. Dave Melanson was just minutes away from where two people had recently been killed in Debert. They believed they were close to catching the gunman and therefore acted on reasonable grounds when they “visibly and audibly confronted” the councilman in the vest
It wasn’t until the worker, David Westlake, ducked behind the marked cruiser and ran into the hall — an action the officers reasonably viewed as “an evasive, aggressive, life-threatening response” — that they fired, Johnston wrote.
But the RCMP memo echoes points Onslow firefighters have made, including that the bullet casings show officers were a long distance — 88 meters — from Westlake when they shot him.
He also notes that surveillance video and testimony confirm that it took seconds for Brown and Melanson to start shooting once they arrived. The video also shows that Westlake never fell down.
The memo says there is no evidence the officers tried to send a message over police radios just before they opened fire, as they said they did.
Currie said RCMP investigators who interviewed him about a year after the shooting as part of their own internal investigation seemed sincere about their desire to be thorough and “do the right thing.”
The damage to Onslow’s hall cost $39,000 to repair which the fire department says the RCMP paid. (Submitted by Sharon McLellan)
“Seeing the memo is the first time I can believe that the RCMP actually did what they said,” Currie said.
“I’m shocked they opened one of their own, it’s not in their culture.”
SIRT director at the time, Felix Cacchione, told the inquiry he had “real concerns” about Johnston’s report — and decided never to hire him again because his work was “one-sided.”
However, Cacchione told the inquest that he stood by his final decision not to press charges after reviewing all the evidence.
Currie said that was not enough for him and suggested that if Cacchione had such problems with Johnston’s report, he should have commissioned another one. Muise agreed, adding “it just seems like nobody wants to take responsibility and SIRT didn’t want to dig deeper into it.”
Both firefighters are asking SIRT to reopen the investigation in light of the RCMP internal memo.
Two RCMP officers began shooting in the direction of the Onslow Belmont Fire Hall on April 19 at around 10:21 am. (CBC)
Bruce Pitt-Payne, a retired Mountie in British Columbia, agrees. He said there didn’t appear to be any downsides to reopening the case.
“They should definitely investigate as much as they can … it’s a very serious incident. I think we would all be talking about it a little differently if one of the officers or Mr. Westlake or anyone in that building had actually died,” Pitt- said Payne.
Bruce Pitt-Payne, a former RCMP officer, says there is nothing to lose by reopening the investigation. (CBC)
Current SIRT Director John Scott declined to comment when asked Tuesday about the released memo and calls to reopen the Onslow investigation.
The RCMP will decide whether to share the report
Nova Scotia RCMP spokesman Cpl. Chris Marshall said via email “at no time did the RCMP attempt to influence the SIRT investigation. The purpose of the memo was to inform SIRT of inconsistencies in the use of force report, concerns SIRT also had with the report.” Marshall said the force’s dangerous incident investigation into Onslow was “nearing completion” and a final report was being drawn up. Once complete, the RCMP will review its findings and work on any recommendations that have not yet been addressed, he said. When asked if that report would be shared with outside agencies, Marshall said it would “be decided” who would be given a copy once it was completed.
