HALIFAX — A new document shows that the gunman who killed 22 people in rural Nova Scotia had been on the radar of police a decade before his two-day rampage in April 2020.
The report tabled Tuesday by the public inquiry into the killings says Gabriel Wortman was the subject of police investigations on at least two and possibly three occasions.
The first occurred in June 2010 when RCMP in Moncton, N.B., were contacted by the gunman’s uncle. Glynn Wortman told RCMP Const. Len Vickers that his nephew, who lived in the Halifax area, had threatened to kill his parents. Later that day, Vickers informed Sgt. Cordell Poirier of Halifax Regional Police that he had also received a complaint from Wortman’s father, Paul, about a death threat from his son.
Poirier’s report on the incident says he and another officer went to the killer’s home in Dartmouth, N.S., where they spoke to his spouse, Lisa Banfield, at 3:25 a.m.
The document says Banfield told the officers that Wortman was asleep. She said he had been upset over a letter he had received the day before related to a lengthy legal battle with his parents over property. Poirier asked Banfield if there were any weapons in the home and she said no.
Poirier later checked with the Canadian Firearms Registry for any possible weapons and reported that “If [the perpetrator] has any weapons they are not registered.” The document states that Wortman had never applied for a firearms licence.
Poirier’s report said he eventually spoke with Gabriel Wortman, who told him over the phone that he had a pellet gun and two inoperable antique muskets hanging on the wall of his cottage in Portapique, N.S.
The Halifax sergeant reported that he contacted RCMP Const. Greg Wiley, who said he was a friend of Wortman’s and would attempt to meet him to discuss the complaint. The document states that Wiley, who worked out of the Bible Hill detachment near Portapique, had struck up a rapport with the killer after responding to a report of a tool theft from his cottage around 2007 or 2008.
However, Poirier reported closing the file on Aug. 26, 2010 after he couldn’t get in touch with Wortman’s father. Meanwhile, the inquiry said Wiley told the inquiry’s investigators he couldn’t recall speaking with Poirier in 2010, and RCMP lawyers later advised that Wiley couldn’t find relevant notes after a search of his home following the mass shooting.
In an interview with two RCMP officers on May 8, 2020, Paul Wortman suggested the Mounties had failed to properly investigate the 2010 death threat. He said nothing came of it because his son simply denied the allegation and denied owning weapons aside from the pellet gun and muskets.
“That was the end of the matter,” Paul Wortman said during the interview in his Moncton home.
“I would hope that in the future when the RCMP get a call like that, they just don’t record it, file it and walk away …. I believe that if a judge had issued a search warrant, he would have been arrested and his weapons would have been seized.”
A second threat, this one against police, prompted a warning from the Truro, N.S., police department nearly a year later. On May 4, 2011 the Criminal Intelligence Service of Nova Scotia issued an officer safety bulletin to police agencies about Wortman written by Cpl. Greg Densmore, who warned that Wortman “wants to kill a cop.”
The bulletin was based on information from an unnamed person who told police that Wortman was in possession of at least one handgun and several long rifles that were stored in a compartment behind the flue in his Portapique cottage.
Poirier took note of the bulletin which he thought represented a “viable threat.”
He reported that he spoke to Densmore, the author of the bulletin, and to Wortman’s father before contacting Bible Hill RCMP, where Const. John McMinn, the on-duty supervisor, said he was unaware of the bulletin. Poirier said he provided McMinn with his report from 2010, including information about Wortman’s personal vehicle.
The document says McMinn conducted a database search, but it adds no further details.
The third incident involves a report filed to police on July 6, 2013 by an ex-neighbour of the gunman in Portapique. Brenda Forbes told the inquiry commission that she reported her belief about illegal weapons during a complaint about a domestic violence incident involving Lisa Banfield, the gunman’s spouse.
However, RCMP record searches following the 2020 mass shooting indicate the responding officers took “minimal notes” at the time. Much of the information had since been purged, and RCMP investigators eventually concluded that the incident was “outside the parameters of the homicide (mass shooting) investigation.”
An RCMP email on June 9, 2020 also said there “seems to be a discrepancy” in Forbes’s memory of her call to police and added that there was no record of a “domestic occurrence” on the day Forbes described. “Our member who spoke to her in 2013 says he believes that call was about Brenda — not about a domestic against someone else,” the email states.
Forbes subsequently told the inquiry in an Aug. 19, 2021 interview that police never called her back about her complaint, and they did not make a voice recording when she spoke with them.
Meanwhile, the inquiry’s foundational document also released details about the gunman’s arsenal at his home in Portapique.
It shows that relatives on both sides of his family and others, including neighbours and people who had worked on his property, had been shown his guns. Several people were also shown where they were hidden in the Portapique cottage and in an adjacent warehouse.
All described weapons including high calibre pistols, assault rifles and shotguns, and the document makes it clear that Wortman wasn’t shy about telling people that he had obtained some of the guns in the United States.
Lisa Banfield told the inquiry in an interview that he had “Rambo and military-style guns” and had purchased his handguns in the United States and brought them back to Canada hidden in the back of his truck.
When the gunman was killed by police as he stopped to refuel a stolen car north of Halifax, he had several weapons in his possession.
The document states police recovered a Glock 23 pistol, a Ruger P89 pistol, a Colt Carbine 5.56 semi-automatic rifle, a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle and a Smith & Wesson Model 5947 handgun that belonged to RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson, whom the gunman had killed shortly before.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 3, 2022.
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
