'Living here is a complete nightmare': Portapique survivor of N.S. shooting struggling with little support

PORTAPIQUE, N.S. -

Leon Joudrey's home is surrounded by terrible memories of the night his friends and neighbours just down the road were killed in Nova Scotia's mass shooting.

“Living here is a complete nightmare, all I see is my friends that died, and fires, and SWAT teams and I don't even want to be here anymore,” he says.

After the April 2020 tragedy, Joudrey spent almost two years living anywhere he could but Portapique.

But he had to return to maintain the house and 3.5 acres of land off Orchard Beach Road after unsuccessfully trying to sell the property.

The modest bungalow, it’s basement recently finished by Joudrey, is where the killer’s common-law-spouse, Lisa Banfield, ran to for help in the early morning hours of April 19, 2020 after she hid from Gabriel Wortman overnight after he assaulted her during an argument.

By that time, Joudrey had already smelled a structure fire burning somewhere in the community. When he took a drive to try to find the source, he encountered an ERT team in a tactical vehicle, and says he was simply ordered over a loudspeaker to leave the area.

Not knowing what was going on, he returned to his house and his two dogs.

Down the road, his friends and neighbours, Greg and Jamie Blair, had already been murdered at their home.

His ex-girlfriend Lisa McCully had also been killed in front of her home.

Joudrey didn’t know about the killings until after another ERT team came to his home to extract Banfield from the community.

He says the officers didn’t even ask his name and left him there while Wortman was still at large.

“I'm the lucky one, I survived,” Joudrey told CTV News in an interview a month after the 22 murders.

However, his experience continues to haunt him and has taken a toll.

“And I was taking stuff out on people and social media, and then the police picked me up one night, took me to the (psychiatric) hospital, and that's where I spent the next month,” he says. 

Once he was released from hospital, Joudrey says there was no mental health follow-up, although he says he has been diagnosed with PTSD.

“Well, they kind of forgot about me,” he says. “I kind of fell through the cracks in the mental health system and it was about four months before they did any follow up or checks with me."

Joudrey says he is now seeing a psychiatrist and just connected with a psychologist in the past month. It’s been two-and-a-half years since the tragedy.

One of the lawyers representing many of the families of victims and survivors says Joudrey’s struggle is indicative of what many are going through.

“A number of them feel, just forgotten about,” says Sandra McCulloch.

“There are people who are survivors of the mass casualty event that are still having a hard time, they're still not fully supported."

The issue of supporting survivors is one she raised at the Mass Casualty Commission examining the tragedy.

“I know this does come within the umbrella of the work that the commission is doing, but we have also been concerned that there’s been focus on, and rightfully so, on those who have been lost, and the families they’ve left behind. And there’s been broader focus on our communities in general and how improvements can be made to prevent and address events that may be comparable to this in the future,” she says.

“But there does seem to be those people that may fall in the middle that aren’t as immediately affected by the mass casualty event, in the way that we might first come to think of.”

“Their own experiences, they’re unique,” she adds. “And we’re certainly hoping that the Mass Casualty Commission will be attentive to the recommendations that support individuals like the survivors as well.”

The municipal councillor for the Portapique area at the time of the shootings, Tom Taggart, agrees that some residents in the area are still facing challenges.

“It's as big or a bigger struggle today as it was back then,” says Taggart, now the PC MLA for Colchester North.

He says for some, there is sadness over the loss of what the community once was.

“And now, the community that they had loved so much is gone, in a sense, that little community within that community,” he says. “They’ve lost that (within that subdivision), they’ll never get it back.”

“They were sort of over here, the focus was all on the inquiry and the RCMP, the victims, and these folks are quietly trying to rebuild their lives, and it's not easy,” says Taggart.

Joudrey describes it in another way.

“It's been hell,” he says. 

Joudrey says he’s also under financial strain.

It's been almost two years since he was able to work at his former forestry job, and he says disability benefits through his employer will run out in early 2023.

He says he’s now waiting for a letter from his psychiatrist to see if he can return to work.

While $6.2 million was raised in donations to the “Stronger Together” fund administered by the Canadian Red Cross in response to the shootings, the organization says that money was earmarked for family members of those killed in the tragedy.

“In particular with a focus on those who had dependents who relied upon someone who is no longer with us,” says Bill Lawlor with the Canadian Red Cross.

“But certainly if anyone had an inquiry, we would encourage them to reach out to us.”

But that means survivors such as Joudrey did not qualify for the assistance, which the Red Cross says has all been committed and either dispersed or held in trust.

Joudrey wants to sell his property, but isn’t sure he’ll get enough for it to be able to make a new start.

But he doesn’t want to stay in a place that reminds him of the past.

“It’s not the same anymore,” he says.