LOWER ONSLOW, N.S. — The Onslow Belmont Fire Brigade hall was being used as a registration centre for evacuees from the Portapique Beach area Sunday morning when RCMP officers arrived on scene and opened fire.
“The hall was used to provide a place where residents could come take a break, register and get hotel and Red Cross information,” the brigade says in a Facebook posting, which has since been removed.
“We can confirm that around 10:30 a.m. there was gunfire at our hall and the gunfire caused considerable damage to our property, including taking one of our trucks out of service,” the posting said.
Fire Chief Greg Muise bullet damage to one fender, the engine block and the windshield was destroyed.
The hall was being used in co-ordination with the Emergency Management Office, which had members on scene. An RCMP officer and cruiser were staged on the property to assist with evacuee registration and several other people were also on scene.
“Our video surveillance does not capture the shooters but does show two people who appear to be RCMP officers enter our property, one to the front and one to the rear,” the posting continues. "One of these people enters our hall at the front but no one who is sheltered inside the hall spoke with the people/person resembling the RCMP officer so we (cannot) confirm why they were there. No one identified themselves as an RCMP officer. They left our property shortly after the gunfire. We have since been contacted by SIRT (the Serious Incident Response Team) and are co-operating with their ongoing investigation. Fortunately no one was physically injured.”
Joy McCabe, who lives directly beside the firehall, was looking out her kitchen window while cooking breakfast when an RCMP vehicle suddenly stopped in the middle of road. She said two officers got out and both immediately began firing multiple rounds.
“And while I’m looking, that car pulled up right there in the middle of the road, opened both doors and started shooting. And then I remembered seeing just a little blurb on my Facebook about shooting and I said ‘I think the guy’s here that was doing some shooting.’ And down I got and went into the bedroom. I didn’t know where to go at that time.”
McCabe said after the officers finished shooting, they moved up a little closer and crouched down behind a wooden garbage bin near the edge of the road.
After the shooting stopped, McCabe said she went back to the window, at which point she noticed someone crouched down between two vehicles in the firehall parking lot.
“After I got a little more comfortable and my husband said there wasn’t anything going on, I look and there was a guy down between two cars,” she said. “All I could see was the top of the head, I could see that it was a shaven head (like a brush cut), you know. And I don’t know why, I just thought, 'Why is he ducking and hiding if isn’t, you know, it’s got to be the shooter.'”
She later learned the shooter had already passed through the area.
Pat Curran, SIRT’s interim director, said he could not provide much information because the investigation into the incident is in its early stages. He did acknowledge that two RCMP officers did discharge their firearms at the scene, though he could not identify which weapons were used or who the officers were shooting at.
No one from the brigade was immediately available for further comment.
