Nova Scotia death toll rises to 19

HALIFAX — The RCMP says a weekend killing rampage in Nova Scotia has now claimed at least 19 lives and the toll is expected to rise.

Chief Insp. Chris Leather says investigators are continuing to piece together one of Canada’s deadliest mass killings at 16 crime scenes in central and northern Nova Scotia.

He says five of the crime scenes involve burned-out buildings, and they expect more bodies to be found inside.

Leather says some of the victims were know to the killer while others who were targeted did not know him.

The victims include an RCMP officer, a teacher, two nurses, neighbours of the assailant and two correctional officers killed in their home.

Investigators have said the shooter, identified as 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman, was killed after police intercepted him at a gas station in Enfield, N.S.

In the rural town of Portapique, N.S., where the killing began late Saturday, most residents who knew Wortman saw him as an affable, house-proud seasonal neighbour who loved spending time at his sprawling log-home overlooking Cobequid Bay.

Neighbour Nancy Hudson said she met Wortman about 18 years ago when he bought the property on Portapique Beach Road, which is just a short walk from her home on Highway 2.

“He was very jovial,” she said in an interview just outside her house. “But there is another side to Gabe. He had some issues, especially with his girlfriend.”

Hudson said she and her husband John used to hang out with Wortman and his friends on Portapique Beach Road, though she said she hadn’t seen her neighbour in about a year.

“There was some underlying issues that I think he had with his relationship. It was a red flag …. (What happened on the weekend) wasn’t a surprise to some degree, but not to this extreme.”

Hudson mentioned being at a bonfire with Wortman, his girlfriend and some other neighbours around 2004 when there was some kind of altercation that left most at the gathering stunned. Hudson declined to offer details.

“He had an obsession with his girlfriend,” she said. “Just being jealous about things with her. I think that’s where things got in the way …. She was a beautiful girl.”

Portapique is home to about 100 residents, most of them living in modest homes along Highway 2 on north shore of Cobequid Bay.

But while Wortman’s first murders were discovered by RCMP there, his rampage continued across a swath of northern Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia Teachers Union president Paul Wozney identified teacher Lisa McCully as one of the dead in a Facebook post. She taught at Debert Elementary School, about a 20-minute drive north of Portapique.

“9300 NSTU hearts are broken along with those of her colleagues and students at Debert Elementary, as well as her family and friends who knew her not only as a passionate teacher but as a shining love in their lives,” he wrote.

Judy MacBurnie, the aunt of a Portapique couple gunned down in the community, said Greg and Jamie Blair were among those killed.

The couple ran a firm that provides service, sales and installation of natural gas and propane units in the area. MacBurnie said they had two small children who are being cared for by grandparents, and Greg Blair also has two older sons from an earlier relationship.

Taylor McLeod confirmed that her father Sean McLeod and his wife Alanna Jenkins, of Wentworth, N.S., were among those who died.

The couple were correctional officers, with Jenkins working at the Nova Institution for Women in Truro while McLeod worked at the Springhill Institution for over 20 years.

Meanwhile, the Victorian Order of Nurses noted the deaths of nurses Heather O’Brien and Kristen Beaton.

“All of our frontline care providers are heroes. Yesterday, two of those heroes, Heather O’Brien and Kristen Beaton, were taken from their families, and from VON. We mourn their loss, and we mourn for their families,” wrote Jo-Anne Poirier, president and chief executive of the agency.

RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson, a 23-year member of the force and mother of two, has been identified as the officer killed. A male officer suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

Police say they were initially called to reports of a man with firearms in Portapique on Saturday night.

There, officers found numerous people dead or wounded, both inside and outside a property. But Chief Supt. Chris Leather said that by the time police arrived, the shooter was gone.

An hours-long manhunt and eventual police chase ensued, with officers providing periodic updates about the suspect’s whereabouts.

Leather said the killings appeared to be, “at least in part, very random in nature.”

Premier Stephen McNeil described the massacre as “one of the most senseless acts of violence in our province’s history.”

“I never imagined when I went to bed last night that I would wake up to the horrific news that an active shooter was on the loose in Nova Scotia,” McNeil said in Halifax on Sunday.

— With files from Michael Tutton, Keith Doucette and Holly McKenzie-Sutter

Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press