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Newly opened search warrant documents relating to the mass shooting in Nova Scotia are shedding light on how the gunman created the RCMP replica vehicle he used.
On April 18 and 19 this year, Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people – including neighbors, strangers and an RCMP officer – and burned homes belonging to three couples he killed. Two men who were killed survived. The gunman traveled about 195 kilometers over a 13 hour period before the RCMP killed him at a gas station in Enfield, NS
During most of the rampage that began in the small community of Portapique, NS, the 51-year-old dentist drove a decommissioned police vehicle he bought through a federal government auction site on June 27, 2019 for $ 10,990, according to RCMP Sgt. . Angela Hawryluk, who wrote the search warrant applications.
During a press conference in April, RCMP said the gunman bought the cruiser in the fall of 2019.
While it would have simply been white and stripped of its accessories when the bandit bought it, documents released on Monday show that for months he has been working to make it look identical to a real RCMP cruiser.
He installed a push bar on the front bumper on August 24, 2019 and emailed someone to say the car was a bigger job than he expected and it was his first time doing it. The recipient’s name has been blanked out.
Even before buying that exact car, Wortman seemed to be making plans for a replica.
“Are you able to make a complete set of decals for a Ford Taurus RCMP sedan?” wrote in an email dated June 10, 2019 to an American company, according to search warrant documents.
The company responded the next day that it was passing work and moving away from custom orders.
He ended up bringing the decals much closer to home, to a sign shop in Truro, NS RCMP said one of the store’s employees, Peter Griffon, printed the decals for Wortman without his boss’s knowledge.
Griffon was living in Portapique on probation in April, after serving time for drug offenses linked to organized crime. After initially lying to RCMP about printing the decals, the Parole Board of Canada ruled that violated the conditions of his release and sent him back to prison.
RCMP went on to obtain a search warrant to examine Griffon’s phone records and found that he had corresponded with Wortman several times via email and had saved photos of a police car.
Griffon first sent Wortman multiple photos of an RCMP cruiser with decals on it in late July 2019. The photos were taken in a garage but it is unclear from court documents whether this was a real cruiser. Just before Christmas, he sent a photo of lights on top of a cruiser.
A month before the massacre, Wortman wrote to Griffon saying “Friday beers” had been suspended due to COVID-19. In an email on March 16, he assured Griffon, who was about to be fired, that there would be a lot of odd jobs around his properties.
On the morning of April 18th Wortman wrote Griffon saying he was going for a ride to celebrate his anniversary, but they were planning to work together the next day. Griffon was chopping wood for him in Portapique.
The shooter claimed the cruiser was for the parade
Summaries of police interviews with people who knew the gunman show that Griffon wasn’t the only person who knew he was working on a replica car.
Aaron Tuck, his wife, Jolene Oliver, and their 17-year-old daughter, Emily, lived in Portapique and were among the victims on April 18.
Tuck’s best friend, whose name is transcribed in court documents, said he saw a white police car and a pack of decals in Wortman’s garage at some point in 2019.
During the 2019 visit, Wortman asked Tuck and his friend for help in moving a chair and told them he was “fixing the car to use during the parades,” according to court documents. He also explained to them that he was shopping for vehicle accessories online.
While they were in his garage in Portapique, Tuck’s friend said Wortman showed off a police uniform and something that went with a holster and belt. The exact word is deleted.
Tuck’s friend said he had heard Wortman enjoyed working on motorcycles in the garage which he had outfitted with a large bay window and a bar. But he said he had also heard that “Gabriel terrorized people” while drinking, according to court documents. He had also tried to buy the Tuck property for far less than they hoped to sell it.
Other people who spoke to the police described the gunman as violent, paranoid and controlling.
Gunman had pandemic concerns
RCMP previously said it believes fears over COVID-19 have led Wortman to stock up on cash, food and fuel.
The shooter mentioned not being optimistic about the virus in emails released on Monday.
The RCMP summary states that Wortman wrote to someone that once the money runs out, people will get desperate and need weapons. “Thank God we are well armed,” he wrote. The name of the person you were emailing is blanked out.
Several people who spoke to RCMP mentioned Wortman’s familiarity with guns.
In the newly opened documents, a man originally from New Brunswick told police that he and Wortman had gone to gun shows together and had spent time together shooting in Maine. Another person told RCMP that Wortman was known to have fired his gun in the ocean.
4 former cruisers
The car Wortman used during filming was one of four former cruisers he had purchased in recent years.
Through his company, Berkshire Broman Corp., he also bought a 2013 Ford Taurus from an auction on the federal procurement site for $ 2,998 in July 2019. He took possession of that car – which was also previously owned by the ‘RCMP – October 2nd. , 2019. It was parked in Dartmouth during the shootings.
Police found two other burned-out former police vehicles on its Portapique properties. He bought one of those cruisers in March 2019.
The RCMP investigation continues nearly seven months after the mass shootings. Investigators said determining how the gunman he got the illegal weapons he used, the uniform he was wearing and whether he had any help are key parts of the investigation.
So far, no one is facing allegations.
Vehicle accessories purchased online
The documents released on Monday concern a request made by the RCMP to search the bandit’s Amazon account.
In his affidavit, the sergeant. Hawryluk said the warrant covers murder, attempted murder, arms trafficking, unauthorized importation of firearms, conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to import firearms.
Through search warrants, the RCMP also obtained information from PayPal Canada showing that between March 2019 and November 2019, Wortman spent at least $ 3,477 USD on items, many of which appeared to relate to car retrofits from the police.
Some of the items he paid for during that time period included a police bumper, two center consoles, armored rear window bars, a “prisoner transport divider” and an LED light bar. Most of these purchases date from late March 2019 to early April 2019 and were intended for police vehicles.
Other items purchased by Wortman using a credit card included a gun holder and patches or decals with police themes such as the “thin blue line” and the Canadian flag.
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