Slain RCMP officer went down in a gunfight with Nova Scotia mass shooter, inquiry hears

Const. Heidi Stevenson grabbed her pistol and began shooting at Nova Scotia's mass killer after he rammed her vehicle head-on, with the RCMP officer managing to fire 14 shots and injure the gunman's head before she was killed.

New documents released Monday detail what the commission leading a public inquiry believes happened at Shubenacadie, N.S., on April 19, 2020, when the gunman, who was disguised as a Mountie and had already murdered 19 people, shot and injured RCMP Const. Chad Morrison and then killed Stevenson and bystander Joey Webber.

All three were shot in the space of seven minutes, before the killer took off. The details of what happened are laid out in interviews, radio logs and 911 transcripts gathered by the Mass Casualty Commission.

"The whole thing, it was … tough. It hit me, hit me pretty hard," Sgt. Darren Bernard, one of the first officers to find Stevenson's body, said in an interview with RCMP in July 2020.

The commission is tasked with examining the events of April 18 and 19, 2020, when Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people, including a pregnant woman, during the course of a 13-hour rampage through several rural communities.

Stevenson was the most senior member on duty at the RCMP's Enfield, N.S., detachment on the morning of April 19, and directed where her team members should go as shift supervisor.

Throughout the morning Stevenson saw the messages sent out to all RCMP members about the gunman's identity, that he was considered armed and dangerous, and potentially using a Ford Taurus that looked like a fully marked RCMP cruiser.

Around 8:15 a.m. Staff Sgt. Bruce Briers, the risk manager at the Operational Communications Centre in Bible Hill, N.S., broadcast on the Hants East radio channel that all members should wear their hard body armour during their shift "just in the event you come across this vehicle."

About a half-hour later, Stevenson asked over the police radio whether a media release had been issued about the gunman's mock cruiser so the public could "be on the lookout for that."

RCMP eventually sent a tweet, alerting the public at 10:17 a.m.

At 10:39 a.m. Briers asked for two Enfield members who were trained to use carbine rifles to go to Colchester. Stevenson had failed the course when she'd taken it two years earlier, so she sent constables Austin Comeau and Chris Gibson. 

A few minutes later, Stevenson heard on the radio an unknown marked cruiser had been spotted in the community of Brookfield.

"Chad, if there's anything to that last one, I'm gonna make my way to your position," Stevenson said over the radio at 10:44 a.m. to Morrison. She headed south on Highway 215 toward Shubenacadie where he was parked.

Morrison was sitting at the intersection of a side road just north of the Shubenacadie River and Highway 2 when he spotted a cruiser coming toward him, driving south.