An RCMP officer who warned colleagues that there may be a way out of Portapik, NS, on the first night of the 2020 massacre said it was such a busy night that he did not remember making a radio broadcast.
Const. Vicki Colford, who then retires, answered questions in an affidavit entered as an exhibit of the Commission on Mass Victims earlier this month. Her statement sheds light on how police missed key information on a possible escape route that the gunman is believed to have used to escape from police less than a kilometer away.
On April 18, 2020, Colford was the fourth RCMP officer to arrive the night an armed man killed 13 neighbors and set fire to several houses. Family members of the people killed the next morning wondered why police had not done more to isolate the community and why it had taken so long to realize that the gunman may have fled on a private road bordering a blueberry field. .
The public investigation investigating the tragedy reviewed the video surveillance footage, spoke with witnesses and found that the shooter most likely drove on the field and exited Highway 2 a few hundred meters from the main entrance between 22:41 and 22:45 AT.
Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19, 2020. Top row left: Gina Gulet, Dawn Gulenchin, Jolin Oliver, Frank Gulenchin, Sean McLeod, Alana Jenkins. Second row: John Hall, Lisa McCully, Joey Weber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O’Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from the top: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joan Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom line: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corey Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)
When Colford stopped around 10:32 p.m., two police officers had entered the community on foot. After learning that a third would join them, she decided to inspect the vehicles at the entrance and provide medical assistance to Andrew and Katie MacDonald, who were shot.
At 10:48 p.m., Colford said on police radio, “If you want to look at the map, we’re told there’s a road, something like a road that someone can get out of here before.” And if they know the roads well. “
But at least three senior officers watching the response testified that they had never heard her broadcast, and Colford herself said she did not realize she had done so.
“No memory” from a radio show
It was only after reviewing the investigation documents that she learned about him and “there is no memory” of being told in reverse or if the woman she spoke to identified the path associated with it, Colford wrote in an affidavit.
MacDonald leaves in separate ambulances, and Colford stays with Katie MacDonald for about 45 minutes.
Katie MacDonald was very upset and did not speak clearly. “I tried to keep her calm while watching our surroundings for the threat,” she said.
Portapic air map from May 2020 with street names added by the Commission on Mass Victims. (Commission on Mass Victims)
Her focus was on “trying to keep my head spinning to observe and be aware” amid nearby fires, gunshots and the active freedom shooter, Colford said.
She said her guess – based on reading the transcript – was that she made the broadcast to pass on new information to the risk manager, who monitors the response and everyone else who was part of it.
She said most of her communications that night were on the radio, but she also spoke to senior officers on the phone.
Worried about an ambush, inspecting vehicles
Another Portapik resident, Harlan Rushton, told the committee he talked to Mountie’s wife on the way out, telling her something like “You know there’s another way out,” and the officer agreed.
Colford told the commission he had no recollection of the exchange, but checked about 10 vehicles for traces of an armed man, weapons, gas cannons and anything suspicious.
An RCMP employee spoke to a local before escorting them to the home of the blockade in Portapik on April 22, 2020. On the night of April 18, Const. Vicki Colford was located at the entrance to Portapique Beach Road. (Andrew Vaughn / Canadian Press)
Her goal, she explained, is to get people out quickly so that the exchange lasts only a few seconds. She said she scanned the backs of trucks and hatchbacks and had at least one driver smash their trunks.
“I had no idea where the perpetrator was … The possibility of an ambush has always been in my head,” she wrote.
“Every time a vehicle left, it distracted me from my surroundings, and I didn’t want anyone to be shot while I was stopped.”
He is not required to testify
Lawyers representing the victims’ families asked Colford to appear as a witness before the commissioners. she initially said she would be summonedthey later provided Colford with accommodation so that she could provide a written statement instead of oral testimony.
The National Police Federation made the request and provided confidential personal information, which the commissioners took into account.
The attorneys representing the participants were able to send the questions they had to Colford, including requests for clarification of the statements she had previously made to the RCMP during the interview a few days after the shooting. She answered 63 questions asked by the committee.
I felt like a “sitting duck”
Colford and Capt. Natasha Jamieson spent most of the night near the mailboxes at the top of Portapic Road. While they were stationed around a colleague’s jeep, they tried to secure cover – Colford with a rifle and Jamieson with her service pistol.
None of the officers had completed carbine training.
“I really felt a lot like a sitting duck, in which I couldn’t see much beyond my immediate area due to the lack of street lighting,” Colford told the committee.
Earlier, Colford provided backups to his colleague Const. Nick Dorington – who stopped the speeding shooter in February 2020, but has not had other previous interactions with him and does not know the community so well.
Dorington is due to testify during Monday’s investigation.
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