An RCMP officer who alerted her colleagues that there might be another way out of Portapique on the first night of the 2020 massacre does not even remember doing so because the night had been hectic.
the constable, Vicki Colfordnow retired, says she was focused on helping a woman in shock.
She answered inquest questions in a sworn affidavit filed with the Mass Casualty Commission.
His testimony shows that the RCMP missed key information about a possible escape route the shooter may have used to evade police.
On April 18, 2020, Vicki Colford was the fourth gendarme to arrive in Portapique, where a gunman killed 13 neighbors and burned several houses.
Family members of victims killed the next morning questioned why police hadn’t done more to cordon off the community and why it had taken so long to realize the shooter might have exited onto a private road bordering a field of blueberries. .
When Vicki Colford arrived around 10:32 p.m., two officers had entered the community on foot. A third was going to join them so she decided to check the vehicles at the entrance and make sure that Andrew and Katie MacDonald, who had been shot, were receiving medical attention.
At 10:48 p.m., Vicki Colford said on his police radio: If you want to take a look at the map, we are told that there is a road, a path that someone could get out of, if they know the roads well.
But at least three of the senior officers testified that they had never heard this message and the officer herself did not realize that she had.
It was only by reviewing the investigative documents that she learned this.
The MacDonalds left in separate ambulances and Vicky Colford stayed with Katie MacDonald for about 45 minutes.
She was very upset and did not speak clearly. I was trying to keep her calm while monitoring our surroundings to make sure there was no danger.she says.
Another resident of Portapique, Harlan Rushtonsaid he spoke to a female constable as he was walking out, saying something like You know there’s another way outand the policewoman nodded.
Vicki Colford has no recollection of this exchange, but she admits to checking about 10 vehicles for signs of the shooter.
She explained that her goal was to get people out quickly and therefore the exchanges only lasted a few seconds.
I had no idea where the attacker was. The possibility of an ambush was always on my mindshe wrote.
Not required to testify
The lawyers representing the families of the victims had requested that Vicki Colford testifies, but the commissioners granted Colford an accommodation so that she could provide a written statement instead of oral testimony.
The agent Vicki Colford and his colleague Natasha Jamieson spent most of the night parked near the mailboxes at the top of the Portapique road.
They tried to cover each other. Vicki Colford with a shotgun and Natasha Jamieson with his service pistol.
Both officers had not completed their rifle training.
Vicki Colford had also provided backup a month earlier to his colleague, Constable Nick Dorrington.
He had pulled over the shooter for speeding in February 2020, but had had no other prior interactions with him and did not know the community very well.
The agent Nick Dorrington is due to testify Monday at the public hearings of the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry.
With information fromElizabeth McMillan of CBC
Radio Canada
Source: Radio-Canada
