Former RCMP officer testifies that warning tweet in N.S. mass shooting took too long
Global News
A former RCMP officer told an inquiry that a tweet warning the public about the N.S. shooter should have been sent immediately after he ordered it, not two crucial hours later.
A former RCMP officer told a Nova Scotia public inquiry on Tuesday that a tweet warning the public about the mass shooter driving a replica police vehicle should have been sent immediately after he ordered it, not two crucial hours later.
Retired Staff Sgt. Steve Halliday testified that he was assigned to notify the public on April 19, 2020 that the gunman was continuing his rampage in a vehicle marked to look exactly like an RCMP cruiser. The killer murdered 22 people over two days in central and northern Nova Scotia.
Halliday said he delegated this task to Staff Sgt. Addie MacCallum at the command centre in Great Village, N.S., at about 8 a.m. that day, with the “expectation that that was going to take place in the immediate future.”
However, the tweet with a photo of the mock RCMP vehicle wasn’t published until 10:17 a.m., too late to warn victims murdered in the Debert and Shubenacadie areas.
Halliday said he received the full description of the replica vehicle after the spouse of the killer emerged from the woods of Portapique, N.S., after 6:30 a.m. and her family members sent images of the car to police. He said RCMP supervisors dispatched officers to the killer’s two addresses in Portapique to see if two burned Taurus vehicles matched the spouse’s descriptions of the suspect’s replica police car.
He said that by 7:55 a.m. on April 19, 2020, he had learned the burned cars didn’t contain weapons or match features described by the spouse, adding that he said he had concluded the replica car was still unaccounted for.
According to an exhibit shown at the inquiry into the mass shooting, Halliday wrote in his notes, “We are concerned … there is a possibility he may be on the run in a fully marked RCMP (car).”
“This has to be communicated out to the (RCMP) members, all municipal agencies, police departments and border crossings and we have to get it out to the public as soon as possible,” he added in the note.