“如果他在一辆警车那天晚上来到我家，我会打开我的门，欢迎他，我可能已经死了”

多达五个火灾由虎头队的杀手队，在2020年4月18日的夜晚吸引了一些好奇的旁观者。

Among them was Autumn Doucette. She lived a short distance away at Five Houses and was concerned “the forest fire” might cross the Portapique River and reach her home or her mother’s house, also in Five Houses.

Doucette drove toward the fires and took photos with her phone; she later showed the photos to the RCMP, to a private investigator hired by families of the victims, and to investigators with the Mass Casualty Commission. Doucette’s photos and other information she supplied turned out to be useful in trying to establish a timeline and reconstruct the shooter’s movements during that terrible night.

Her first photo of the killer’s house at 200 Portapique Beach Road, time-stamped 10:56pm, shows a fire. Doucette’s second photo of the killer’s house snapped at 11:14pm shows the fire “phasing out” and “a full-on blaze” then underway at a home owned by John Zahl and Joanne Thomas located further down the same dirt road overlooking the Bay of Fundy.

The timing of those two photos corresponds with phone calls made to 911 by members of the Griffon family on Faris Lane — they reported hearing gunshots at 10:39pm as they stood outside their cottage watching a fire at the killer’s home and later, a fire that began at the Zahl/Thomas residence before they went inside at 11:15pm.

多赛特告诉调查人员,他叫她的男朋友rd several gunshots (which he initially mistook for fireworks) at about 10:20 while he was outside smoking. This was within a minute or two of when the killer fired two shots narrowly missing Andrew MacDonald, a neighbour who went out to check on one fire and discovered a second.

秋天的Doucette没有听到那些枪声。她担心她在天空中看到的辉光朝着Portapique是一种森林火灾。她叫她儿子Dean Dillman，他们为自然资源部门工作，他收集了他的消防装备并跳到他的车里。在4月18日晚，母亲和儿子都在围绕Portapique区域驾驶，远视几次火灾。

Dillman, who was driving a white Subaru, was watching from a vantage point at one end of the Brown Loop road where it connects to an unmarked road that crosses a blueberry field. He later estimated he sat there watching the fires from 10:45-10:55. His mother’s phone records show she spoke to him at 10:38 and again at 10:58, when he left the Brown Loop.

Dillman said he did not see a white car resembling a police car “zipping” along the Brown Loop, as reported to police by members of the Zimmerman family who placed that sighting between 10:33 and 10:45.

That is the route — across the blueberry field, northeast along the Brown Loop, and then out on Highway 2 heading north toward Great Village and Truro — that MCC investigators believe the killer may have used to evade police. If so, Dillman may have missed meeting the killer by mere minutes, according to the RCMP officer who took his statement.

“他们告诉他他是一个非常幸运的男孩，而是因为如果他早些时候已经有几分钟，那么他现在可能不会活着，”他的母亲说。“我认为这是困扰我的事情......”

威尔逊在大村庄的瓦尔逊煤气停止的摄像机似乎抓住了一款类似于10:51的标记警车的白色汽车的颗粒状图象。具有大规模伤亡委员会的调查人员认为，这是由射手驱动的假警车，根据一个理论，迪尔曼到达棕色循环之前必须离开Portapique地区，否则迪尔曼将看到车辆。从棕色循环到大村的旅行估计每小时100公里的速度不超过5.5分钟。在10:45之前，没有路障，因为所有第一个响应者都停在Portapique Beach Road的顶部。

撒上手电筒

Doucette told investigators she called her son at 10:38 because she got frightened “by someone with a flashlight in the woods” near the spot where she was in her car watching the fires. She was parked by a clump of trees she refers to as “Shady Nook.”

手电筒的人可能是克林顿埃里森，他正在寻找他的弟弟葬礼，在找到他的身体后逃到树林里。一旦她回到家后，Doucette称RCMP报告了手电筒事件。RCMP调度员告诉她锁定她的门并留在里面。Doucette表示，她没有回忆出更多的信息，而不是这次，她意识到，在该地区发生了“射击”或“射击”。

First notification through Facebook

Doucette said her son had reacted to seeing a Facebook post on his phone that mentioned a “shooter” or “shooting” in the area captured as a screenshot from an RCMP twitter feed. (In fact, the RCMP Twitter feed mentioned a “firearms complaint,” not a “shooter.”) This was around the time she was taking a second photo of the fire at 200 Portapique Beach Road, at 11:14. The reference on Facebook to a shooting convinced both mother and son it was time to head to their own homes.

The lead investigator for the MCC, Dwayne King, asked Doucette how she would describe the information provided by the RCMP through its Twitter feed. Doucette said she didn’t have Twitter on her phone Saturday night but she added the Twitter app to her phone early Sunday morning.

The first message the RCMP tweeted to the public was sent at 11:32pm on Saturday advising that the RCMP were at Portapique for a “firearms complaint” and asking the public to avoid the area and for residents to stay inside and lock their doors. The first time RCMP told residents and neighbours about an “active shooter” came via a tweet at 8:02am, which advised people in the area to stay inside and lock their doors.

“Vague, now that I look back and know more,” replied Doucette to King’s question about the RCMP information sent over Twitter. “Inaccurate; very inaccurate.”

“And why do you say that?” continued King.

“因为如果他那天晚上在警车那天来我家，我会打开我的门，欢迎他，我可能已经死了。是的。因为他们知道他正在驾驶一辆警车，那天晚上，这是加布里埃尔·沃斯曼，而不是第二天早上。我听到所有三个911个电话，所有这三个人都确定了他。然后他们[rcmp]说他们不知道是他直到第二天早上6:30。这真是令人作呕，我真的很生气。“

她提到的三个911个电话来自杰米布莱尔，布莱尔和麦卡利儿童，以及安德鲁和凯特麦克唐纳。

Trust broken over communications issues

Doucette在Mi'kmaw Healing Center工作，为经历了家庭暴力的女性庇护所，位于Millbrook First Nation，Truro南部的半个公里。她说，虽然她与驻扎在那里的RCMP官员有着良好的工作关系，但RCMP领导人与公众沟通的方式，夜晚意味着她不再有信心。“信任被打破”，“她说。

In her statement to the MCC investigator, Doucette also said she heard a series of gunshots shortly after returning to her home at 11:25pm. That account appears to match up with reports from the first three officers on the scene as they were hearing gunfire as they were checking on the Blair and McCully children at 135 Orchard Beach Drive between 11:20 and 11:50.

RCMP Superintendent Darren Campbell’s affidavit prepared in response to a lawsuit begun by the families of the shooting victims also indicates RCMP members heard gunshots at roughly the same time, 11:40-11:45 pm.

It’s possible those sounds may have been explosions caused by the multiple fires. Doucette told investigators she didn’t sleep much that night and recalls hearing more gunshots at about 2:30am. That information is corroborated in Campbell’s court affidavit, in which he stated that “at 2:19am, more sounds of gunshots were reported in Portapique,” and at 2:50am, “ERT in Portapique report hearing a single shot from small arms fire.”

如果是这样，那些“镜头”似乎并不与犯罪相关。鉴于混乱和恐惧，它可能被肇事者以外的人发射。Vidbert Industrial Park的视频监控相机表明，到午夜，杀手队在焊接店的车身后停放在他的车上。

Given the number of citizens drawn like moths to the flames from five separate fires burning in an area just 30 houses, it is frightening to consider that the toll of dead and injured could have been even higher had the onlookers crossed paths with the gunman.

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