Firefighters want police watchdog to reopen investigation into 2020 RCMP shooting at N.S. fire hall

Almost three years after two RCMP officers opened fire on a civilian outside a fire hall in Onslow, N.S., two firefighters who were inside the building at the time want the province’s police watchdog to reopen its investigation into what happened.

Onslow Belmont Fire Brigade volunteers chief Greg Muise and deputy chief Darrell Currie hid for hours inside the hall along with Portapique evacuee Richard Ellison after the shots were fired, fearing a wanted gunman on the loose was outside.

But the shots were fired by two RCMP officers, Const. Terry Brown and Const. Dave Melanson, who had stopped outside the hall in their unmarked car, believing a regional EMO coordinator standing next to a stationed RCMP cruiser was the killer.

At the time, a massive manhunt was underway for Gabriel Wortman, who had already murdered 13 people in Portapique, N.S., the night of April 18, 2020, before continuing his rampage while driving in his mock RCMP car, killing another nine Nova Scotians the next morning.

Last Thursday, the inquiry into the tragic events released its final report, criticizing the RCMP for how it handled the Onslow shooting, and the ensuing investigation by the province’s police watchdog, the Serious Incident Response Team (SiRT).

“I was glad to see that there was a lot of criticism of the SiRT report itself and the way that it was written,” says Currie. “I've said all along that it was a flawed report. So the commission has once again, verified that for me.”

Currie and Muise say the Mass Casualty Commission’s findings only highlight the need for SiRT to reopen its investigation into the shooting.

In 2021, SiRT cleared both officers of any criminal wrongdoing.

But the MCC report lays out failures by both the RCMP and SiRT to follow policies and procedures both immediately after the shooting, and during the investigation that followed.

“The RCMP command group did not recognize the gravity of the Onslow fire hall shooting,” write the Commissioners. “They failed to take the necessary steps to evaluate the circumstances of the shooting, secure the scene, or evaluate the involved members’ capacity to continue with the critical incident response.”

While policy dictates SiRT be notified “as soon as practicable” after an incident, the investigative body was not informed of the Onslow shooting until hours later, and the officers involved had already continued on with their duties together that day.

“It’s frustrating. There's no appeal process for SiRT reports,” says Currie. “What do you do? You know, they have their final say, they write the reports, however they want them to turn out and there's nothing you can do. It just leaves me frustrated.”

Muise questions whether SiRT investigators gathered all the information at the time that they should have.

“It’s should be reopened, and go back and get the eyewitnesses that saw it and go from there,” he says.

“(SiRT) didn't talk to us very long. They didn't ask us a whole bunch of questions … if I spent five minutes with SiRT that was it, and that’s the last I heard of them.”

The commission’s final report states it “heard from several witnesses and participants that were directly affected by the Onslow fire hall shooting that the SiRT report did not instill confidence in the investigation of that incident.”

The commissioners also found SiRT representatives communicated with the RCMP and exchanged information before SiRT issued its final decision on the incident.

In one instance, logs included as part of the SiRT investigation and provided to the commission indicate Const. Brown contacted two SiRT investigators to ask for updates on the status of the investigation, and to inquire whether their investigation led to him being placed on administrative duties.

As a result, the inquiry’s report recommends “an officer who is the subject of a SiRT investigation should not communicate directly with the SiRT investigator (outside of providing evidence or information to the SiRT) during ongoing investigations.”

SiRT’s director, Alonzo Wright, said he was unavailable for an interview with CTV News. Wright took over the position in January, and told CTV in an email he is still reviewing the commission’s report.

“I… hope to be in a better position shortly to provide the public with the direction SiRT intends to proceed,” he wrote.

Along with calling on SiRT to reopen its file on the shooting, Muise and Currie are also dissatisfied with the MCC’s own findings on exactly what transpired outside the fire hall that morning.

“(Our lawyer) always tried to get (the commission) to bring in more witnesses that saw what happened that day. And I think that would have been a big help,” says Muise.

Their lawyer, Michael Scott, says EMO coordinator David Westlake and RCMP officer Cst. Gagnon -- who were the ones mistakenly targeted by the shots fired outside the hall -- should have testified at the inquiry.

“We didn’t hear from a number of important witnesses, and that didn’t really help the fact-finding process,” says Scott.

“So I don’t know how we can say we addressed the facts of Onslow-Belmont appropriately if we never heard from two of the most important witnesses,” he adds.

As for whether the report’s recommendations will lead to change, Muise and Currie are skeptical.

“The biggest thing that would make me feel better would be to have an accurate SiRT report completed,” says Currie. “Second, would be an acknowledgement by the RCMP that they actually did something wrong, instead of continuing to say everything was done, ‘according to the textbook.’”

The RCMP is doing its own internal investigation on the incident, which a force spokesperson says is being finalized, and will be received by the Nova Scotia RCMP this month.

But Scott says he isn’t holding out hope his clients will ever get to see those results.

“The facts of what happened at Onslow-Belmont were not really dealt with in our view appropriately by the MCC, they certainly weren’t dealt with appropriately by SiRT, and the (internal RCMP report) is the best that we can ask for.”

“Do I think that we’ll get to see it? Absolutely not.”