Operation leader can’t explain message delay

The staff sergeant who took charge of the “overall operation” of the RCMP response to the April 2020 mass killings can’t explain a 37-minute delay in sending out a public Twitter message and photo of the marked RCMP replica vehicle the killer was driving on the morning of April 19.

Now retired, Steve Halliday told the public inquiry in Dartmouth on Tuesday that he knew nothing at the time of the Alert Ready public warning system that had been operational in Nova Scotia since 2011.

Long after taking command of the overall response before midnight on April 18, Haliday said he still believed there was only one way in and out of Portapique, a coastal Colchester County community about 32 kilometres west of Truro where Dartmouth denturist Gabriel Wortman began his 13-hour killing rampage.

“No,” Haliday told Josh Bryson at the Mass Casualty Commission public inquiry Tuesday when the lawyer representing the family of Portapique victims Joy and Peter Bond asked him why there was such a delay in conveying the photo and information. Approval for the Tweet was first requested at 9:40 a.m. but it was not sent along until 9:49 a.m. and not actually posted for another 28 minutes, Bryson said.

“You’d agree that in a mass casualty with the perpetrator on the move and mobile, with what we now know and what we were learning at the time, was that unfortunately the casualties are occurring at a very rapid pace and that this nine minutes is a very unacceptable delay,” Bryson asked.

“I would agree that the sooner that information was out the better,” Halliday responded.

Bryson said at 9:49 a.m., the RCMP had approval that the Tweet could go out but it was not posted until 10:17 a.m.

Halliday said he was not aware of that until shortly before he came to testify Tuesday.

“I would have expected that,” he said of the Tweet being sent out immediately.

Halliday said he had no explanation for the 28-minute delay, but said “I would agree,” that such a delay was unacceptable.”

But the delay was much longer than 28 minutes.

Questioned by Sandra Mcculloch, a lawyer with the Patterson Law firm that represents more than half of the 22 victims’ families, Halliday confirmed that in his notes, written some time between 7:55 a.m. and 8:18 a.m., on April 19, he noted that the killer could be on the run in a fully marked RCMP replica vehicle and that such a message should be communicated to all RCMP members, municipal police agencies, border crossings and “we have to get it out to the public ASAP.”

Halliday responded to Mcculloch on Tuesday that his thought at that time was that “we somehow needed to let the public know that this car was out there, along with the individual.”

Halliday said he tasked that messaging to Staff-sgt. Addie Maccallum.

“That was my expectation that that was going to take place immediately,” he said.

Halliday said he had no information about RCMP discussions to decline sending that information to the public or knowledge that any such discussions took place.

Halliday was testifying after commission lawyer Anna Mancini presented a virtually impenetrable 312-page foundational document on the RCMP command post, its operational communications centre and command decisions during the killing rampage.

Questioned by Mancini, Halliday said RCMP initially learned there were three Ford Taurus decommissioned RCMP vehicles registered to the killer and that one was at his Dartmouth property and two others appeared to be burning at his Portapique properties.

Early on the morning of April 19, Lisa Banfield, the killer’s common-law wife, had emerged from the woods where she hidden overnight and described a fourth replica vehicle with decals and equipment that would be found on an RCMP cruiser, including light bars and a silent patrolman.

Halliday said the emergency response team (ERT) were tasked to go to the killer’s Portapique properties, where they determined by 8 a.m. that neither of the two burned-out vehicles were the cruiser that Banfield had described and neither did the vehicle in Dartmouth fit the description.

“There is a fourth car that is unaccounted for,” Halliday said. “We didn’t know where that car was and we didn’t know where Gabriel Wortman was.”

Mancini asked Halliday why the message about the replica vehicle wasn’t sent out even before it was confirmed that it was not one of the three accounted for.

“Putting it out any sooner than that may have created an even more difficult situation for our members to be dealing with at that time,” Halliday said. “I wouldn’t have seen that going out before it was confirmed that it wasn’t one of those vehicles that was burned out at the scene.”

Halliday said there was a concern that a public message about a killer dessed like an RCMP officer and driving a replica vehicle could cause public panic.

Mancini asked Halliday about the potential for using Alert Ready, the public emergency alert system active in Nova Scotia since 2011 that the RCMP did not deploy.

“I was unfamiliar with that particular asset being used in our environment,” Halliday said. “It simply wasn’t in our playbook that I was aware of.”

The first foundational document presented at the inquiry nearly three months ago provided the theory that the killer escaped Portapique at about 10:45 p.m., on April 18 by travelling a road along the perimeter of a blueberry field to connect to Brown Loop and then onto Highway 2.

Halliday said he was not aware that the blueberry field road was accessible by a vehicle until days after the event. Because of inadequate mapping of the area that included the absences of access to pictometry computer programming, that exit was not contained until 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. on April 19.

Lawyer Tara Miller, who represents the family of Kristen Beaton, asked Halliday if, when police learned that the killer was travelling on Highway 4 between Wentworth and Glenholme on the morning of April 19, he had considered amassing RCMP resources to set up a roadblock in the “choke area” where several highways meet at Truro.

Miller said that Banfield told police early on the morning of April 19 that the killer would be headed to the Russell Lake area of Dartmouth to get her sister.

Halliday said shortly after police learned that the killer was travelling between Wentworth and Glenholme, a 911 call alerted them that he was in the yard of Adam and Carole Fisher, who live on Highway 4 in Glenholme.

“The immediate response is to go and intercept the perpetrator,” Halliday said. “That was the priority. Within a very short period of time, he was at a residence in Glenholme. It was my belief that containment at that residence had been established, our emergency response team had been deployed and that the individual was going to be taken into custody.”

Aside from lessons to be learned about public messaging and mapping capabilities, Halliday agreed with lawyers representing the families that improved air support capabilities and more training for response teams in rural, wooded areas are necessary.