Loved ones faced agonizing wait for information at 2nd N.S. mass shooting location

When Dan Jenkins arrived in Wentworth, N.S., looking for news about his daughter, Alanna, after learning her house was burned and neighbours had heard gunshots, he came upon a roadblock and walked up to an RCMP officer stationed nearby. 

The officer pointed a rifle at him and ordered him to put his hands up. The Mountie told him to return to his vehicle and took his phone number. 

It wasn't until the next day that someone from the RCMP contacted Dan and his wife, Sue Jenkins. Eventually an officer told them it was unlikely their daughter had survived the fire. It would be at least six weeks before the medical examiner's office confirmed their fears: Alanna Jenkins and her partner, Sean McLeod, were among 22 people killed by a gunman on April 18-19, 2020. 

The account of Dan and Sue Jenkins and notes from officers who responded are included in documents released Wednesday by the Mass Casualty Commission, offering new details of what happened at the second location of the mass shooting.

They detail how that sunny spring morning several neighbours on Hunter Road in Wentworth became concerned after hearing shots and later discovering a fire at McLeod and Jenkins's home. 

The records also show that Jenkins's parents were not the only ones waiting for dreaded news. It took RCMP about three hours to inform the wife of Tom Bagley, who had gone out for his usual morning walk, that neighbours had found his lifeless body steps from the rubble of McLeod and Jenkins's home.

Patsy Bagley later told the commission she questioned "why the RCMP could not have come to her sooner" given officers were just 400 metres away, the documents show. 

The horror started the night before, 55 kilometres away in a tiny subdivision in Portapique, N.S., where Gabriel Wortman killed 13 neighbours and torched several buildings, including his cottage.

After taking a break overnight, he drove in a replica RCMP vehicle along a quiet two-lane highway to McLeod and Jenkins's home. Several surveillance cameras captured his movements as he approached around 6:30 a.m. Nearly three hours later, they showed the cruiser going in the opposite direction.

The public inquiry has determined that based on the analysis of forensic evidence, "it appears plausible" the gunman shot Jenkins and that MacLeod "may have been shot" before he lit their home on fire. When the shooter left around 9:20 a.m., their two dogs were also dead and their home facing the Wallace River was in flames. 

It's never been clear why the gunman targeted McLeod and Jenkins, who both worked as corrections managers at nearby penitentiaries, or what exactly he did during the nearly three hours spent at their home. He had known the couple for years and they socialized from time to time, but friends and family said they weren't close. 

WATCH | Amielia McLeod says her dad and stepmom were loving, welcomed everyone:

The documents released by the public inquiry show five people who lived on Hunter Road recalled hearing gunshots that morning beginning at some time after 6 a.m. 

Some also heard an animal's yelp. CBC spoke to half a dozen households on Hunter Road about what they saw and heard that morning and some neighbours said people were known to shoot at nuisance animals, so gunfire wasn't that out of the ordinary.