'Nova Scotians' sense of safety was rocked': RCMP failures dominate inquiry's final report into 2020 mass shooting

A long list of failures by Nova Scotia RCMP leadership and policing systems dominate the final report into Nova Scotia's April 2020 mass shooting.

A long list of failures by Nova Scotia RCMP leadership and policing systems dominate the final report into Nova Scotia’s April 2020 mass shooting.

Gabriel Wortman’s 13-hour killing rampage on April 18 and 19 took the lives of 22 people, including a pregnant mother. The inquiry’s timeline of events, determined through interviews, medical records, and forensic evidence -- some of it, found by members of the public, it states -- indicate the gunman killed his first 13 victims in the Portapique, N.S., area within a 45-minute period the night of April 18.

Dressed like a police officer and driving his replica RCMP cruiser, Wortman continued to elude police into the next day, when he killed another nine people, including an RCMP officer in an exchange of gunfire.

After months of public hearings, hours of testimony, and thousands of pages of evidence, the Mass Casualty Commission’s final report, released at a public event in Truro, N.S. Thursday, is filled with harsh criticisms of the RCMP’s actions before, during, and after the tragedy.

Throughout the entire report, commissioners J. Michael MacDonald, Leanne Fitch, and Kim Stanton never use Wortman’s name, only referring to the killer as “the perpetrator.”

From the tragedy’s outset, the commissioners write, the RCMP failed to fully recognize the important role of eyewitness accounts on the ground in Portapique the night of April 18.

“In particular, the RCMP discounted the clear information coming from Portapique community members that the perpetrator was driving a fully marked RCMP vehicle … a false conclusion that the eyewitness accounts were mistaken.”