Deputy fire chief renews call to reopen SIRT probe into 2020 Onslow shooting

More than three years have done little to alleviate Darrell Currie’s frustration with what he considers a lack of accountability for the April 19, 2020 RCMP shooting at the Onslow fire hall.

“I think it should be reopened and re-looked at in light of all the discrepancies and the Mass Casualty Commission’s reporting on it,” Currie, deputy chief of the volunteer Onslow Belmont Fire Brigade, said Monday.

“All of that stuff just doesn’t add up.”

Currie has said the fire hall was like a second home to him and others, including Chief Greg Muise.

The second home feeling was forever shattered on that April 2020 morning during the police manhunt for Gabriel Wortman, the Dartmouth denturist who shot and killed 22 people, including a pregnant woman and an RCMP constable, during a 13-hour rampage that began in Portapique and extended to the Wentworth area, Debert and Shubenacadie.

Currie is still haunted by two RCMP constables firing five rifle shots toward the fire hall from where they stopped their unmarked car on Highway 2.

Approaching the fire hall at about 10:17 a.m. that day, the two constables — Terry Brown and Dave Melanson — saw David Westlake, the emergency management co-ordinator for Colchester County, wearing a reflective safety vest and standing beside a marked RCMP cruiser in the fire hall parking lot.

Brown and Melanson had received information that the killer, who had gunned down 13 people the night before in the seaside village of Portapique, some 30 kilometres west of the fire hall, was wearing an orange safety vest and driving a replica RCMP cruiser.

The constables later reported that they saw Westlake, whom they mistook for the killer, duck behind the RCMP vehicle, driven by Const. Dave

Gagnon, who was sitting in the vehicle after backing into the parking lot earlier to provide security for the comfort centre being set up at the fire hall.

Two of the rifle blasts penetrated the fire hall building, damaging a door and a fire truck inside. Another shot passed through the fire hall’s electronic sign near the highway.

“There is no evidence to explain, justify or support SIRT’s decision to exonerate the two officers for shooting at a civilian.”

Darrell Currie, deputy chief of Onslow Belmont Fire Brigade

Inside the fire hall, Muise, Currie and Richard Ellison, a Portapique resident evacuated to the fire hall that morning after his son, Corey, was killed in Portapique the night before, heard the shots, moved to a back room, frantically overturned tables and hid behind them.

The three men “stood in that room for 57, 58 minutes, still not knowing what was going on outside,” Muise testified at the public inquiry into the killings.

“It was just like we were hostages. Nobody told us anything.”

Currie testified that he thought he would die that morning.

“Fortunately, I didn’t lose my life that day but I lost the life that I had,” Currie said during testimony. Due to the resulting trauma and the medications he uses to battle it, he has not been able to return to his paid employment.

The Serious Incident Response Team, the civilian oversight agency that investigates serious matters arising from alleged actions of RCMP and municipal police officers in Nova Scotia, conducted an investigation and found in March 2021 that the two constables had “reasonable grounds” to fire their weapons.

They were not disciplined.

Brown and Melanson testified at the inquiry that with what they knew at the time, they would not and should not have done anything differently.

“I am having a look at it to determine what next steps are possible.”

SIRT director Alonzo Wright

“We came across a person who looked identical to the description we had, the guy was wearing a reflective vest, standing next to a police car,” Brown testified.

“I believed that person was the threat, I believed that person was going to kill people in the area, I believed that was the person who just previously killed people in the area. That’s why we took the action that we did.”

Last week, Currie sent an email to Alonzo Wright, a senior Crown attorney who took over as SIRT director in January, requesting an explanation and timeframe for the next course of action on a previous request to reopen a SIRT investigation because of what Currie referred to as a “flawed” decision at the completion of an improperly conducted investigation.

“I can indicate that I am having a look at it to determine what next steps are possible,” Wright said when reached Monday.

Wright did not commit to reopening the investigation, saying only that he was “looking at some material that had been presented.”

Currie, in his email to Wright, said he was making the request “in light of the multitudes of testimony and documentation that clearly calls into question the outcome of your former director’s final report and leaves your agency lacking in trust, confidence, integrity and independence.”

Currie said in the email that the final SIRT report released publicly was simply “a narrative of the difficult day officers Brown and Melanson experienced.

“There is no evidence to explain, justify or support SIRT’s decision to exonerate the two officers for shooting at a civilian.”

Neither Westlake, who bolted from behind the police car to take refuge inside the fire hall, nor the police officer in the car, were hit by the rounds fired.

The Mass Casualty Commission, struck by the governments of Canada and Nova Scotia to find out what happened during the killing rampage, in its 3,000-page final report delivered earlier this year found that the RCMP command group did not recognize the gravity of the fire hall incident and failed to take the necessary steps to evaluate the circumstances of the shooting, secure the scene and evaluate the involved members’ capacity to continue with the critical incident response.

Several of the commission’s 130 recommendations related to SIRT, including that all RCMP communications and co-ordination with SIRT regarding an ongoing investigation must occur through a designated RCMP liaison and that SIRT should implement a corresponding policy requiring its investigators not to communicate about ongoing SIRT investigations with members of the subject police agency aside from that agency’s designated liaison person.

The commission found that SIRT representatives communicated with and exchanged information with the RCMP before the final Onslow fire hall report was released.

Logs included in the SIRT investigation show that Brown contacted two SIRT investigators, requesting updates on the investigation.

Currie in his email to Wright pointed out that testimony from eyewitnesses contradicts the narrative related by Brown and Melanson, specifically accounts that provided no evidence to support that either Brown or Melanson tried to use a mobile or portable radio immediately prior to the shooting, no evidence to corroborate testimony that either constable identified themselves as police or yelled at the man in the reflective vest to raise his arms.

Currie says the SIRT report states that both Brown and Melanson testified that Westlake “ducked behind the marked police car then popped up and ran towards the firehall entrance” but video evidence clearly shows that he simply turned and ran to the fire hall.

Currie also said in his email to Wright that, contrary to RCMP and SIRT policy, Brown and Melanson were not separated after the shooting incident, leaving them “hours of time to possibly concoct a story to explain their actions to SIRT.”

Currie said Monday that he doesn’t know that the constables did concoct a story, “but they had the opportunity to do that.”

Those inconsistencies warrant a reopening of the SIRT investigation, he said.

“I don’t believe (Brown and Melanson) identified themselves before they opened fire,” Currie said. “Nobody heard it. Dave Westlake would have no reason to run from the police, he works with them on a daily basis. . . . He would have no reason to run from them unless he was being shot at.”