51-year-old denturist, Gabriel Wortman recently committed multiple shootings and set fires at 16 locations in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, killing 22 people and injuring three others before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) shot and killed him in Enfield.
We gathered that for part of the thirteen-hour crime spree, Wortman impersonated a police officer by driving a replica police car and wearing a police uniform. An investigation into his motives is underway.
Police are determining how he obtained firearms without a possession and acquisition licence. Police say the investigation “is detailed and complex”.
“The investigative team is focused on learning more about this very tragic situation, including accurate victim information and whether others may have aided the suspect,” the RCMP said in its statement.
Police were criticized for not using Alert Ready to warn the public about the attacks. An investigation into the law enforcement response to the rampage, including the decision to not use Alert Ready, has also begun.
RCMP superintendent Darren Campbell provided more information around the killer’s moves leading up to the murderous rampage at a press briefing Dartmouth.
Campbell stated that there are 16 crime scenes in all, with investigators dealing with a list of 435 witnesses.
During a COVID-19 press briefing, Premier Stephen McNeil was asked how laws could be re-written to protect against imitating an officer and acquiring police paraphernalia.
“I want to let the RCMP follow through with this investigation and I’m sure there will be recommendations coming out of this,” said McNeil. “Not only here in Nova Scotia but nationally. I’m sure they’ll be looking at the issue of how we deal with surplus equipment from law enforcement agencies from across the country.”
Speaking on the development, Western University criminology professor Michael Arntfield said “I know of few — if any — cases anywhere, where the spree as it were, covered this amount of distance and went on for so long”.
“The shooter capitalized on the use of police legitimacy to actually enact his shootings and then eventually evade police,” said assistant professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University, Rylan Simpson.
“It’s a total tale of legitimacy betrayal.” “He identified a niche in this case, the fact that the community had trust in its police, and then used trust against them to go about completing his extreme act of violence,” Simpson said.
Meanwhile, a police officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Canada’s worst mass shooting erupted from an argument between the gunman and his girlfriend, who survived the attack.
The officer confirmed to The Associated Press that the shooting rampage stemmed from a domestic dispute involving the couple.
According to residents, Wortman, who owned a denture practice in the city of Dartmouth, near Halifax, lived part time in Portapique. Atlantic Denture Clinic, his practice, had been closed the past month because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Authorities said Wortman did not have a police record, but information later emerged of at least one run-in with the law. Nova Scotia court records confirm he was ordered to receive counselling for anger management after pleading guilty to assaulting a man in the Halifax area on Oct. 29, 2001.
The guilty plea came on Oct. 7, 2002, as his trial was about to begin. He was placed on probation for nine months, fined $50 and told to stay away from the man, and also prohibited from owning or possessing a weapon, ammunition or explosive substances.
It would be recalled that the country overhauled its gun control laws after Marc Lepine shot 14 women and himself to death at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique college in 1989. Before this recent rampage, that had been Canada’s worst mass shooting.
