RCMP officers clear up wrongdoing in fire hall shooting

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HALIFAX – Two mountain men who accidentally shot a bystander outside a Nova Scotia fire hall should not face criminal charges as police search for the man responsible for a mass shooting that killed 22 people, an Ontario police watchdog says.

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In a report released Friday, the Independent Special Investigations Unit said RCMP officers Terry Brown and Dave Melanson were acting reasonably when they opened fire outside the Onslow fire hall on the morning of April 19, 2020.

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No one was injured, but some people inside the fire hall were injured, including two firefighters. A total of five shots were fired. Bullet fragments hit the exterior wall, the garage door of the fire hall and the fire truck.

Onslow was one of more than a dozen rural communities struck by the killer during a 13-hour rampage that began on the night of April 18, 2020, in Portapeak, New York. He took the form of a mountain and drove the same car. RCMP cruiser Gabriel Wortman shot and killed 13 people the first night, and the next day he killed nine more, including a pregnant woman and an RCMP officer.

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He was shot and killed that day at a gas station in Enfield

The SIU report marks the second time Brown and Melanson have been cleared of wrongdoing.

In March 2021, Nova Scotia's police oversight agency, the Serious Incident Response Team, said a “mass of evidence” led officers to believe the killer was only 88 meters away when he stopped his unmarked vehicle in front of the fire hall.

At the time, Brown and Melanson were told the gunman was wearing a replica RCMP cruiser and that he was wearing a high-visibility orange safety vest.

Officers later told SIRT investigators that they were driving past the fire hall when they noticed an RCMP cruiser in the parking lot and a man wearing a reflective vest standing next to the vehicle. According to the SIRT report, the two officers tried several times to advise other RCMP officers of what they saw over the radio, but were unable to get through because the radios were jammed with too much transmission.

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Both officers got out of their cars with their guns drawn, and the report said, “Police!” he is said to have shouted. and “Show your hands!” That's when a man wearing a vest got into the back of the car and ran toward the fire hall, the SIRT report said. One officer fired four shots, while the other fired one shot.

A Nova Scotia watchdog concluded the officers had a “legitimate excuse” to fire the gun.

“They drew their weapons to prevent further deaths and serious injuries,” the SIRT report said. “(The officers) had reasonable grounds to believe that the man they saw was a mass murderer who disobeyed their orders and killed three other people in the previous hour.”

But soon after the Nova Scotia Police Oversight Agency's report was released, questions were raised about it.

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Two firefighters who were at the fire hall, Chief Greg Muise and Deputy Chief Darrell Curry, demanded a further investigation, saying the officers should be held accountable for endangering lives, damaging property and harming the mental health of many people.

Calls for another inquiry grew after the federal-provincial public inquiry released its final 3,000-page report in March of last year. The report was highly critical of the RCMP's overall response to the mass shooting and its omission at the fire hall.

“The RCMP command team failed to recognize the seriousness of the Onslow fire hall shooting,” said one of the inquiry's key findings. “They failed to take the necessary steps to assess the circumstances of the shooting, secure the scene, or assess the ability of the members involved to continue responding to the critical incident.”

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The investigation also found that after the shooting, “the RCMP did not adhere to its policy and Major Incident Response Team regulations regarding the procedures to be followed following a serious incident involving the jurisdiction of SIRT.”

In April 2023, the Nova Scotia watchdog asked its Ontario counterpart to determine whether the investigation uncovered evidence that could have affected SIRT's earlier decision not to charge Melanson and Brown.

An SIU report released Friday says the investigation heard police mistakenly identified the killer — emergency management coordinator David Westlake — as a counterpoint to Mountain's claim that he ran and ran before officers opened fire.

Westlake told investigators he never heard anyone yell at him to show his hands. Also, none of the eight people who lived near the firehouse who spoke to investigators heard anyone yell, “Show your hands!” He said that he did not hear that.

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According to the SIU report, Mountie Const., who was inside the parked RCMP cruiser. Dave Gagnon told the inquest that even though his window was down, he did not hear any commands from the police.

The Ontario Guardian's report said the new evidence, if true, could change the SIRT's decision because “(Westlake's) disobedience of orders and fighting were part of the basis of (officers') belief that he was the gunman.”

“If they did not give a verbal order, there is an argument that there was no need to resort to deadly force because they did not use lesser tactics to achieve compliance,” the report said.

However, the SIU concluded that the evidence was insufficient to justify criminal charges because it was found to be unreliable. The report found that Westlake's statements contradicted the notes he received that day.

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According to the SIU, Westlake's records say he “walked away and ran to the main entrance of the fire hall” when officers in a gray vehicle yelled “get down” and shots were fired.

As for others who said the officers did not give the order, the report says they may have simply not heard.

“The new physical evidence is not sufficiently convincing to tip the balance regarding the officers' potential criminal liability in favor of a more incriminating scenario,” the report concluded.

“The totality of the evidence, including new physical evidence, does not give rise to a reasonable belief that any of the officers acted unreasonably.”

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