Two Mounties started firing at N.S. mass shooter as he lifted RCMP pistol: documents

Const. Craig Hubley, a dog handler, and Const. Ben MacLeod, a member of the emergency response team, had teamed up in Hubley's vehicle on the morning of April 19.

Two officers who fired rounds into the torso of a mass shooter at a Nova Scotia gas station say they started shooting as the killer lifted what one believed to be an RCMP officer’s general duty pistol.

Details of how two RCMP officers brought the rampage of a 51-year-old denturist to an end after 13 hours have been released over the past week in interviews and statements gathered as evidence by a public inquiry into the April 18-19, 2020 killings.

Const. Craig Hubley, a dog handler, and Const. Ben MacLeod, a member of the emergency response team, had teamed up in Hubley’s vehicle on the morning of April 19 amid the frantic pursuit of Gabriel Wortman as he continued his murders in central Nova Scotia.

Both say in their evidence they witnessed multiple dead bodies when they initially responded to the murders in Portapique, N.S., and they believed Wortman was determined to continue killing.

According to the records, Hubley stopped in Enfield, N.S., for gas, noticed blood running down the forehead of a man inside a car at the adjacent pump, and called out to MacLeod, “Benny it’s him,” causing the ERT officer to move quickly out of the car with his carbine.

In a statement, Hubley says that he started firing as Wortman raised a “silver-coloured pistol” in his direction, and MacLeod told a public inquiry investigator that he believed the killer held an “RCMP general duty pistol” stolen from an officer killed earlier in the day.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2022.