Two years after a gunman killed 22 in Nova Scotia, RCMP still under the microscope

The daughter of a man who was killed in the Nova Scotia shooting said she believes he would still be alive if the RCMP had issued a provincewide alert earlier on.

Two years after her father was gunned down by a man disguised as a Mountie, Charlene Bagley remains convinced he would be alive today had the Nova Scotia RCMP issued a provincewide alert early in the killer’s rampage.

“He usually would check the news on Facebook,” Bagley said in a recent interview, recalling the morning of April 19, 2020 when her father Tom was murdered. “That was his morning routine. But at that point, they weren’t showing the perpetrator’s face or anything.”

The RCMP’s communication with the public during the gunman’s 13 hours at large has become a focal point for the commission of inquiry investigating the worst mass shooting in modern Canadian history, which claimed 22 lives on April 18-19, 2020.

After almost eight weeks of public hearings, key questions remain about how and when the Mounties shared information, including on the first night when the killer fatally shot 13 people in rural Portapique, N.S., about 50 kilometres south of the Bagley home.

The inquiry has heard that on April 18, 2020, at 11:32 p.m. RCMP used Twitter to advise Portapique residents to lock their doors because police were investigating a “firearms complaint.”

That innocuous statement offered little hint of the unfolding tragedy. By that time, the Mounties at the scene were aware an active shooter had already killed at least two people, wounded another and had set fire to a number of homes.

As well, the suspect had yet to be found, officers were reporting gunfire and explosions, and a series of 911 calls indicated the killer was driving a car that looked like a fully marked RCMP cruiser.

The inquiry has heard that at least two Mounties, Const. Stuart Beselt and Staff Sgt. Al Carroll, had suggested the public should be alerted to what was going on. But that didn’t happen until the next morning.