More fatalities have been confirmed in the Nova Scotia mass shooting, bringing the toll to 17, including the gunman. Here’s what we know so far about the sickening attack, now deemed the deadliest in the Canadian history.
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The rampage began around 11:30pm Saturday night, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police responded to a “firearms complaint” in a rural town of Portapique and found an unspecified number of casualties at the scene, but no suspect.
- Police declared an active shooter situation and launched a manhunt, with armed officers patrolling the streets through the night and helicopters joining the search in the morning.
- The suspect was identified as Gabriel Wortman, 51, a part-time resident of Portapique who was also listed as a denturist in the city of Dartmouth, near Halifax
- He made his car look like a Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruiser and wore a police uniform, which indicates the attack wasn’t totally spontaneous.
- While the initial motive remains unclear, authorities believe the attacker knew and may have targeted his first victims, but then began attacking complete strangers randomly.
- The manhunt and chase for the suspect, who changed vehicles at least once, went along one of Nova Scotia province’s busiest highways and ended near a gas station some 35 kilometers north of Halifax around noon Sunday.
- Following a gunfight with police, the gunman was “detained” but soon proclaimed “deceased”, authorities said sharing no further details.
- Const. Heidi Stevenson, a 23-year veteran of the RCMP and a mother of two, was killed responding to the active shooter incident, while another RCMP officer is in hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
- At least 16 people lost their lives, besides the attacker, making it the deadliest mass shooting in the Canadian history. Authorities warned earlier that there might be more victims as the investigation is ongoing and involved “multiple” crime scenes, some with “structures on fire.”
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