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April 23, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
52:33
The Truth About the Nova Scotia Shooting
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Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine.
I'm sorry to bring you this presentation about the most appalling series of events that occurred just this last weekend in Nova Scotia, Canada.
And I've been following the story closely.
I had to wait until at least enough information was presented so that I could give you an overview of what happened, really point out the rather disturbing facts and significant omissions, obfuscations and avoidances in this case that Let us delve into the Nova Scotia massacre.
What we know and what we don't know.
Equally, if not more, important.
So, what happened?
Well, a 13-plus hour murder spree in northern Nova Scotia, April 18th and 19th, 2020, has claimed the lives of at least 22 people.
That number is increasing as more bodies are found in the burnt wreckages of deliberately set fires.
One of the police force's constables was also murdered, and this ended with...
What appears to be a shootout of possible suicide by a cop at a gas station where the shooter was himself.
Let's look at what happened Saturday, April the 18th, 2020, 11.30pm.
The RCMP in Nova Scotia report that they are responding to a firearms complaint in this more rural town of Porta Peak.
Now, this place has like a couple of hundred people, doubles a bit in the summer, but it's very, very low.
A hundred people as little in the winter as a very, very small.
They say that people should avoid the area and lock their doors.
Superintendent Chris Leather later says officers arriving at the scene find, quote, multiple casualties, quote, both inside and outside of the home, but the shooter is nowhere to be seen.
The shooter has vanished.
Christine Mills says it was a terrifying night for the small town, which suddenly filled with armed officers patrolling the streets.
In the morning, helicopters flew overhead, searching for the suspect.
The shooter's whereabouts from midnight to around 8am on Sunday have not yet been conclusively determined.
Now, authorities say that the shooter targeted his ex-wife and her new boyfriend first.
It's unclear if they were killed on Saturday night or Sunday morning.
And we'll talk about his obsession with the cops.
Collection of police cars and so on, and all of the disturbing details around that, and to me the most disturbing detail, which actually occurred not recently, not last weekend, but 19 years ago, which could have prevented the whole thing.
So here's a map. You can pause this if you want to have a look.
You can see that Porta Peak, 11.30pm is where it began.
A burst of emergency calls about firearms at a house alert police.
Officers arrive to a chaotic scene with casualties inside and outside the house, which prompts a massive emergency response.
And as you can see here, it's a significantly large swath of destruction, a rampage that goes on, as I said, for 13-plus hours and covers a wide variety of territory, ending up in Enfield on Sunday, where the shooter dies in a confrontation with RCMP officers at a gas station.
So what happened Sunday, April the 19th, 2020?
At 8am, this is all in Atlantic Time, the RCMP say they are still on the scene and describe the investigation as an active shooter situation.
They tell residents to stay in their homes.
You may not see the police, but we are there with you, they say on Twitter, which turns out to be horrifyingly ironic given the methodology of disguise and escape that the shooter used.
At 8.55am, police publicly identify 51-year-old Gabriel Wartman as the suspected gunman and release his photo.
10.15am, police say Wartman may be wearing an RCMP uniform and be driving what appears to be an RCMP vehicle.
They note the difference between his car and real RCMP vehicles is the number behind the rear passenger window.
10.20am, the RCMP say Wartman is in the central Onslaught and Debert area.
They urge people to stay inside and avoid the area.
11am, police say Wartman was last seen traveling southbound on Highway 102 toward Halifax, a major city, of course, from the Brookfield area.
11.20am, RCMP say Wartman has changed vehicles and is now in a silver SUV, a Chevrolet tracker.
And by the way, I will put the sources to all of this below.
Some of this is verbatim from news sites.
11.40am, the RSMP tweet that Wartman is now in custody.
This was a fairly shocking development, particularly as what came out, I think at 6pm, they finally released the actual facts.
He was caught at a gas station in Enfield, Nova Scotia, where a body could be seen lying on the ground in photos.
A source familiar with the matter who wasn't authorized to speak publicly later confirms to the Canadian press that the suspect has died.
For 40 p.m., the union that represents RCMP officers says one of its members was killed in the rampage.
It says another officer was injured.
6 p.m., finally, RCMP hold a news conference and confirm that Constable Heidi Stevenson, a 23-year veteran of the force, was killed in the course of the manhunt.
They say a second police officer was wounded and is recovering.
They also say in the news conference in excess of 10 people were killed in the rampage but are unable to give an exact number.
10 p.m., RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucky confirms in an email to the Canadian press that 17 people are confirmed dead.
There is an update now, or as of last night, 22 people, including a 17-year-old, have died.
Five structural fires, including vehicle fires, were also located after the fact.
The RCMP are continuing their investigation into what happened.
There are 16 crime scenes scattered across the province relating to the shootings, according to the RCMP. The RCMP have not yet released their own timeline of the events, but said they plan to at a later date.
This is as of a press conference yesterday, which of course brings the big question.
Was he killed in custody?
When they first tweet that the shooter is in custody, And then he's killed later?
That raises some significant questions, and I'm hoping, probably against hope, that intrepid and focused Canadian reporters will try and get to the root of it.
Little asterisk there, exception for Rebel News, who does great work in this area.
Well, if the police say that he's in custody, that means he's been apprehended, and he's, I assume, been disarmed, he's in handcuffs, he's in the back of a cruiser somewhere.
So if the police tweet that he's in custody, how does he end up dying?
Again, could be miscommunication.
There was a whole lot of it that night, but these are important questions to ask.
So, it is important to personalize these tragic events.
These are human beings who met their end.
The two sons of Greg and Jamie Blair, who were shot to death on Saturday night, hid in their parents' house from the killer and then escaped to a neighbor's house.
Tyler Blair said in an interview, they hid in the house until he was gone, and then they took off to the neighbor's house and hid inside with their two little kids next door until the cops came.
So Tyler Blair is the half-brother of the two children, 10 and 12.
He said this in an interview.
Clinton Ellison, the brother of Corey Ellison, who was shot to death on Saturday night, was returning to the scene of the murder to retrieve his car when he stopped to tell a story of being hunted by the gunman.
The two brothers were chatting with their dad at his home in Portapique on Saturday night when they heard a single gunshot and Corey Ellison spotted flames in the distance.
He told his family that he was going to investigate and alert the fire department.
Clint and Ellison soon went looking for his brother when he didn't return and stumbled upon his body with blood pooling around him.
I knew from the gunshots I heard earlier something was really wrong and I turned and ran for my life, said Ellison.
I'll be traumatized for the rest of my life.
I'm having a really hard time with it.
And this, of course, is rural Canada.
It's a very peaceful place.
It's a very crime-free place.
And this, of course, is beyond shocking and appalling.
Ellison told the CBC that he hid from the gunman for four hours, freezing to death in the woods after he saw a flashlight beam pursuing him on the road.
He said if the RCMP had issued an emergency alert, it would have at least given him some information about what was going on while he hit.
And we'll get to the issue around this, that the RCMP used their Twitter feed and a couple of Facebook posts rather than a province-wide emergency alert system that goes off, it seems, pretty much every time a kid goes missing or there's some dispute and a custody battle and a parent takes off with a child, you get burp, burp, burp at 3 o'clock in the morning.
But this was not used. And this absolutely could have and would most likely have saved lives.
We'll get to that in a few minutes.
A grieving husband has revealed that his wife, who was killed in Canada's deadliest mass shooting over the weekend, was pregnant with their second child.
Now, of course, if he had just shot this woman and she was pregnant, he would have been charged with a double homicide, the murder of a mother and the murder of an unborn child, most likely.
But abortion is health care, apparently.
His wife, Kristen Beaton, was a nurse who worked for a Victorian order of nurses.
She was one of 23 victims gunned down by Gabriel Wartman during his 12-hour killing and arson spree across Nova Scotia that began on Saturday and ended on Sunday.
Her husband, Nick, revealed in a heartbreaking Facebook post that his wife was on the front lines helping coronavirus patients before she was killed.
Isn't this appalling? That, of course, she was concerned about getting sick from coronavirus, she was concerned about bringing it home, but instead she got murdered.
Nick wrote, she cried every day before and every day after work, scared to bring this COVID home to her son.
She loved more than I could even imagine anyone could love one person.
Not only was she helping others, but she was carrying their unborn child.
Nick told CTV News that they had planned to announce the news of her pregnancy to their family members and friends this week when Kristen was supposed to be on vacation.
Our son Daxton was going to wear a shirt and let everyone know, Nick said through tears.
Nick said that he spoke to Kristen, his wife, the mother of his child, and his child-to-be on the phone just minutes before she was murdered.
Nick explained to CTV that he told his wife the gunman was at their friend's home.
I didn't find out until an hour later that he had an RCMP cruiser, and that's what he was driving, and dressed as an officer when he cowardly, extremely cowardly, took my wife's life and our unborn baby.
Nick also said that he was forced to tell their son Daxon that his mother was, quote, in heaven.
Choices and consequences.
The RCMP did not use the province-wide emergency alert system designed for just such a situation.
Therefore, Nick could not tell his wife, his wife could not see the information, if it was available, that the shooter was dressed as a RCMP officer.
She might have steered clear of such a situation.
So... We'll get to more in this shocking and appalling.
It's not even a detail.
To me, it's the origin story of the whole horror.
Where did the shooter get his RCMP uniform and cruiser?
This so far is unknown.
So police confirmed Tuesday that the shooter was wearing an, a quote, authentic police uniform, though of course he was not employed by the RCMP. The force did not indicate how he came to acquire the uniform and did not respond to the stars, the Toronto Star's inquiries about it.
Retired RCMP Deputy Commissioner Peter German said it's possible to purchase uniforms online through military surplus style stores.
While sites like eBay do not permit the sale of uniforms, they do allow the sale of items like police patches.
I guess you could Frankenberry up your own uniform.
Another possibility, of course, is that Wartman stole it or bought it from someone who stole it from dry cleaners or from a break-in at a residence.
It is also possible that it was a discarded uniform, although when Mounties quit or retire, or if they're ever fired, fired, they're expected to turn in their uniforms or destroy them, according to this ex-Wartman.
Deputy Commissioner. Of course, there's another possibility that Wartman acquired the uniform from a collector.
It's not illegal, of course, to possess a police uniform.
It is, of course, illegal to impersonate an officer.
So, the shooter suffered from alcoholism and his denture clinic, the Atlantic Denture Clinic in Dartmouth, which they say made him a millionaire, was forced to shut down during the coronavirus lockdown.
There was, I think, another clinic as well that he had, which goes to show you that health and money ain't going to make you happy.
Now, the shooter, even from his high school photo, wherein it is reported that he hopes to become an RCMP officer, the shooter's obsession with the Mounties was underscored by the shrine he had erected at his home in Porta Peak, an acquaintance said.
Nathan Staples, who lives in nearby Great Village and was approached by Wartman a few months ago, asking if he would sell his own decommissioned cop car, told the Globe and Mail, quote, he was one of those freaky guys, he was really into police memorabilia.
Which also goes to question, or brings the question up, how long had he been planning this, if a couple of months ago he was trying to get hold of a used cop car?
So the police have said that they have a fairly good idea that the gunman did not have a firearms license in Canada.
Now, it's not the easiest thing in the world to get a gun license in Canada.
You need two references.
You need a clean criminal record or no criminal record, of course.
You need training and your spouse needs to be informed, I believe.
There's lots of hoops to jump through to get a firearms license in Canada.
On Wednesday, RCMP Chief Superintendent Chris Leather said police first responded to this possible shooting at 10.26pm.
This is Atlantic Time on Saturday in Portapique.
Now, this of course was determined to be a homicide incident and police began searching the area.
But the only information provided to the public at the time was a tweet at 11.32pm saying they were responding to a firearms complaint and asking residents to lock their doors.
Leather said officers set up a perimeter and continued their search for the suspect throughout the night.
Following new information that the suspect was not in the secure perimeter at 8.02 a.m., on Sunday the RCMP began providing more real-time information on Twitter.
As far as I understand it, no communications between 11.32 p.m.
on the Saturday and 8.02 a.m.
on the Sunday. There's eight and a half hours that this guy's on a rampage other than a tweet.
A tweet. We'll get to why this is so appalling in a moment.
So police were working on an alert when the gunman was killed, an alert that would be sent province-wide to cell phones with, I assume, a loud noise, and the push is automatic as far as I understand it, and so people will get that message.
The police force has been criticized for not putting out a provincial alert at any point over the weekend.
Well, that's what it's for!
And telling people, the moment they found out that he was impersonating a cop, to me, would absolutely have saved lives.
Because people would not have let a cop in.
They would have not let a cop pull them over.
My understanding is that the shooter did use his police car and police uniform to pull people over and then murder them.
They would have driven faster.
If pursued by a police car, they would have tried to get away.
They would not have let him in. Lives could have been saved.
This is exactly what this kind of emergency management system, emergency alert system, is designed for to save lives in a crisis such as exactly that which unfolded this last weekend.
Leather addressed that on Wednesday, saying that at 10.15 a.m.
Sunday, provincial emergency management officials reached out to offer use of the alerting system.
So the RCMP never even bothered to call the emergency management officials of the province.
Leather said there were delays in communications between the province and various offices as well as the discussion about what the message would say.
Well, they already had put out a message, so I'm not sure what discussion there would be about what the message would say.
And given how wired everyone is in together these days, how tough is it?
To get a communication out.
Eight and a half hours or more.
He said we were in the process of preparing an alert when the gunman was shot and killed by the RCMP. He said it was between 7 and 8 a.m.
on Sunday that the police received information that the shooter was dressed as an RCMP officer and driving a vehicle made to look like a police cruiser.
He said this was after a key witness was located and identified.
Hours. Leather said as soon as police had those details, they were immediately tweeted out by communications staff.
The tweet was sent at 10.21 a.m.
See, that's just not true then, is it?
If you receive information between 7 and 8 a.m., but you don't tweet that information out until 10.21 a.m., that's not immediate.
At all. Police said they cannot identify the firearms used by the suspect at the time he was stopped by police, as that information is with the Serious Incident Response Team, the province's police watchdog.
Why? I'm no lawyer, I'm no cop, of course, but why?
Why can the police not identify the guns?
Or why can they not tell us what kind of guns were used?
Well, I'll tell you why. Because the Liberal government wants to push for gun control in Canada, more gun control, more hysterical gun control.
The Liberal government wants to push for more gun control.
And if it is revealed that he did not have a license, the guns were illegal, he obtained them illegally.
I mean, illegal even for legal gun owners, right?
You can't have repeat-fire guns, as far as I understand it, in Canada.
So if he got all the guns illegally, if the guns themselves were illegal, and if he had no license to own them, then more licensing won't help.
And that does not go. It does not support the liberal goal of gun control.
In fact, it does quite the opposite.
That if guns can be obtained this easily in Canada, and if they were illegal, and he obtained them illegally, and he did not have a license, then loosening gun restrictions would be the way to solve this kind of problem.
But we'll get to more of that in a couple of minutes.
Leather said that where the gunman got his firearms is, quote, a key part of the investigation.
I guess his... Online avatar name is Chief Blindingly Obvious.
How they call this news is utterly beyond me.
Leather confirmed on Wednesday that the gunman acted alone, but said police are continuing to investigate whether anyone assisted him leading up to the shooting.
Quick question! Leather, if you don't even know where he was overnight, how do you know that he acted alone?
How do you know? I'd love to know the steps by which you have figured out that this man acted alone, but I can't see how...
That can be determined based on the fact that you didn't know where he was for eight hours or so.
Maybe that's changed. This is a moving target, but anyway.
Police have set up a tip line looking for information about events leading up to the mass shooting.
And I quote, if you know something, please call.
Let our investigators decide the value of the information because that piece of information you have may be an important part of the puzzle.
The tip line is 902.
720-5959. But he did warn that you might get an answering machine.
There might not be anyone actually there to answer you, or they may be busy with other calls, because apparently they just don't have the manpower, you see, to answer the calls that are coming in.
Again, just pull everyone in and answer the damn phones.
I mean, having someone to talk to might be a big difference, huge difference, might be the essential difference.
Now, things are a little bit different in the U.S. as far as they report it.
Motives have barely been touched upon by the Canadian media.
But investigators, this is from the U.S., investigators say this weekend's mass shooting in Nova Scotia, which has left at least 22 dead, marking the worst shooting in Canadian history, may have started as a domestic violence dispute.
Canadian law enforcement officials said 51-year-old Gabriel Wattman allegedly targeted his former partner during the killing spree, which took place at six sites and destroyed several properties.
Investigators said some of the other victims, including Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Heidi Stevenson, were randomly killed.
Hmm, I don't know.
I don't know if it's random if you're on the run and you kill a cop.
Whatman allegedly burned down his own home Saturday and made his way to his ex-partner's residence, killing other people who lived there, according to law enforcement officials.
Dead bodies were also found near the former partners, home investigators said.
Five properties allegedly were set on fire by Watman and more victims were believed to be in homes that, quote, burnt to the ground, Leather said Monday.
A 17-year-old was among the victims, but everyone else was an adult, police said.
And that, of course, could just be a, well, no, I guess he was going into people's homes, but it would be horrible.
It would be a horrifying detail to know if he went into...
Someone's home where there were children and killed only the parents.
I did believe he did kill. Yeah, he did actually.
He did kill parents in front of children.
I mean just an absolutely vile, evil, satanic human being.
So let's talk about what happened 19 years ago.
This to me is pretty key.
So This shooter, Wartman, had previously pleaded guilty to a crime.
Now, let me just break this down for you, because, again, I'm no expert, but I like to think I have more than a thimble's worth of common sense in my head, and these are sensible questions to ask.
So, Nova Scotia court records show that Wartman was charged with assaulting a male victim in Dartmouth on October 29, 2001, when he was 33 years old.
Wartman pleaded guilty to the single charge on October 7, 2002.
Alright, so there's your speedy justice.
Just takes a year to deal with this.
He received a conditional discharge, meaning that he would be discharged by the court if he completed nine months of probation and paid a $50 victim fine surcharge.
So, in the philosophy of not making mountains out of molehills and 20-20 hindsight being the easiest deep-in-the-rear-view reflection game that there is, when I first read about this, I'm like, oh, gosh, well, what did he, did he bump into someone too hard?
Did he slap someone with the back of his hand and leave just a little bit of a welt?
I mean, this can't have been a big deal if it's just a $50 victim fine surcharge and nine months of probation and your rep record gets scrubbed clean.
Look at that, scrubbed clean.
Can't have been a big assault, right?
Can't have been a big deal. During those nine months, Wattman was ordered to follow several conditions.
Those included not having any contact with the victim, and not having, quote, any firearm, crossbow, prohibited weapon, restricted weapon, prohibited device, any kind of ammunition or explosive substance, or all such things.
All right, so, yeah, no crossbows.
Oh, isn't that in a movie?
Anyway. The probation order also ordered Wattman to, quote, attend for assessment, counseling, and programs for anger management, as directed by his probation officer.
So, yeah, apparently he had a real temper, and he had to go into anger management, where I assume you have some review as to whether you've successfully completed that anger management or not, and we'll talk about that in a minute or two as well.
A spokesperson with Nova Scotia's Department of Justice, oh, is it still called that?
would not confirm whether the probation officer directed Wartman to take any such programs, and if so, whether he completed them.
The department also wouldn't provide any details about the probation officer.
Yeah, see, I mean, this guy who was in the grip and target of the justice system in the past, who just went and slaughtered close to two dozen people, why would you have any right to know anything about the justice that your taxpayer dollars pay for?
Why would you have any right to know about any of this stuff?
Away with you. Away with you.
So he goes, we hope that he went to take these anger management courses, in which case a psychiatrist, is it, would sit there and review him and say, yes, he showed up, yes, he's made real progress, and someone, someone I hope and I assume, has to sign off on this guy being allowed to own weapons again.
Someone, someone, somewhere, again, 19 years ago, probably retired, who knows, right?
Maybe they're still around. Maybe you can go talk to them, right?
But someone signed off on this guy and said, I assume, yeah, he's good to go.
He's learned how to control his temper.
It's fine for him to have weapons again.
Assuming, assuming that he even went to these courses, there doesn't seem to be any particular proof, right?
Would not confirm whether the probation officer directed Wartman to take any such programs.
And if so, whether he completed them.
But isn't that kind of a condition?
Doesn't the court say you have to take these programs?
I mean, isn't there confirmation that he did these?
I didn't know it was up to the probation officer to say whether or not the guy had to follow the court orders.
I don't know. It's such a tangled mess.
I have no idea. But boy, if this is an institutional failure alongside not alerting people with the entire system designed to alert people that someone was imitating a cop going around killing people, I don't know what is.
So, regarding this, the spokesperson Barbara McLean wrote in an email to CBC News regarding this whole incident from 19 years ago.
We do not release personal information of employees and we cannot comment on an active police investigation.
Uh, yeah.
Babs, that's not an active police investigation.
This is 19 years ago.
I mean, unless it's a radioactive police investigation with a half-life measuring in the Chernobyl decades, I don't know.
The court records don't spell out what happened on that October day in 2001, nor do they indicate whether Wartman completed the nine months of probation.
But if he did complete the probation and followed all the conditions, that would leave him without a criminal record.
According to David Lutz, a New Brunswick-based criminal and family lawyer.
Ah, no criminal record.
So, he could get access to guns again.
Conditional discharge is typically given for what are called low-level assaults.
Apparently that's not hitting below the belt.
There's a definition for that.
So this lawyer, Lutz, said, at the expiration of that time, if there is no repeat of the offense or no similar offense or no other contact with the law in terms of violations, then I can tell you that it will automatically disappear, poof, from his record.
I added the poof, as I generally do.
Typically, a conditional discharge would be given for an assault where police aren't worried the offender will do it again, according to Lutz.
Well, isn't that fascinating?
So, I assume that the police testified, or some policeman or policewoman testified, that Lutz, sorry, that Wartman wouldn't be violent again.
Hmm. Well, that's interesting.
I wonder what methodology they used to come to that conclusion that this guy wasn't going to be a danger.
And if you do say, this guy is not going to be a danger, we can erase his record and let him have guns again, is there any punishment for being wrong, even if it's a little while later?
Seems important. I think I know the answer, and I'm pretty sure you do too.
Let's say a conditional discharge is given in circumstances where it is in the best interest of society and the best interest of the person who has been convicted.
Best interest of society is one of these wonderful other dimensions where you can just throw things that you want to have happen and say that it's somehow moral.
In the best interest of the person who has been convicted...
Now, again, I don't mean to pick on this guy's words, but, you know, what's not conspicuously there is the best interest of the person who was actually attacked.
So, yeah, minor offense not likely to happen.
Again, it's a low-level assault, so you'd think it's no big deal, right?
You'd be wrong, right? So the lawyer finishes up by saying, normally these are very low-level assaults, where there is not bodily harm.
One can only get a conditional discharge for minor offenses.
Bumped into someone too hard.
While a conditional discharge won't appear on someone's criminal record, it may still be flagged at the U.S. border and could prevent someone from being bonded, Lutz said.
Hmm. So maybe he couldn't have gone and done this in Detroit.
So, minor offense, no big deal, who cares?
You know, probably just some big misunderstanding, right?
So what the hell really happened in 2001?
And how could it have changed what happened in 2020?
So... This is what they call a minor assault in Nova Scotia.
So this fellow Matthew, because he was a minor at the time, a child, you see, a child, a child, a child, which means that probably was also going to be targeted by CNN as well.
But we're not using his last name because he was a child.
So Matthew, this guy, Matthew said he was just 15 years old when an allegedly drunk Gabriel Wartman assaulted him outside a denture clinic in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, almost 20 years ago.
It was the fall of 2001 when Matthew said he was waiting to catch a ride home at a bus stop in front of 193 Portland Street, the same address as Wattman's Atlantic Denture Clinic.
That's when the denturist came outside screaming that the teenager was too close to his business.
And this is what Matthew said.
He came out, I guess, in half-drunken rage and ended up punching me as many times in the head as he could.
So this man cold cocked and punched repeatedly a child in the head.
Now, he pled guilty, right?
So this is not alleged. This is, right?
Matthew went on to say, Then he had a friend who came over from around the corner and hit me with a crowbar.
Then the two men stomped on my head and all over my body.
Minor assault? Minor assault?
No record $50 fine?
A maybe couple of months of anger management?
Are you people seriously insane?
Are you ridiculously compromised?
Are you horrifyingly corrupt?
Well, we'll get to that. What are you talking about?
How did this guy skate?
Punches a child repeatedly in the head.
Well, that could cause brain damage right there.
And then he and his friend assault the child with a crowbar.
And I read that he hit the child in the head with a crowbar.
Boom! Attempted murder right there, as far as I can see.
And then they stomp on his head and all over his body with work boots, which means steel-toed boots.
The court documents related to Wartman's arrest do not mention a second person.
Global News called and emailed Halifax Regional Police for comment, but has not yet received a response.
Yeah, don't worry. I'm sure they'll use the emergency response system in about 12 years.
Matthew said he tried to defend himself and was thrown into a newspaper box as the assault ended and police officers arrived.
The denturist was charged with assault on October 2001, according to court documents.
He pled guilty January 2002, so it's a little bit mixed, right?
Some people say it was October, some people say it was January.
Conditional discharge, nine months probation, stay away from the victim...
Matthew, in the East Coast Canadian understatement of the century, said, I think there should have been a little bit more justice there.
I wish the police would have dealt with him a lot sooner, Matthew said.
I wish he would have lost everything back then.
Basically, this might not have happened.
Right. If this guy had been thrown in jail, then he might never have done this.
He might have stayed in jail.
If he had this kind of ferocious temper, he might have beat people up in jail.
So it all could have been avoided if justice had been done earlier.
Plus he would have been on police's radar.
He also, if he's got an alcohol problem, he likely would have dried out in prison.
He would have got rehab in prison and he might have dealt with the alcohol problem.
That might have been one of the reasons why he did this stuff.
Maybe he was on SSRIs.
We'll probably never know.
Now, there's two...
There's a detail. It took me a little while to find this, but there's another detail that's important, right?
So reached by the Star, the Toronto Star, the victim of the assault, said Tuesday that he had been a teenager waiting outside Wattman's clinic for a bus on the day in question.
Wattman came out in a rage, smelling of alcohol, and hit him in the back of the head.
And he said, I was 15 and I'm standing outside of his dendritic clinic on Portland Street.
He came outside, he told me to get off the property, and he smelt like booze, grabbed my shirt, and punched me in the back of the head.
And that's just the nice part of it, he said.
I shook that off, tried to defend myself, and as he's hitting me in the face, one of his friends came out of the house and hit me in the back of the head with a crowbar.
I want you to picture your child, your child, having his or her head half smooshed in with a crowbar.
And then say, that warrants a $50 fine and some Maybe, maybe probation stuff.
Come on, people.
Matthew told the star that the parking lot next to Wartman's denture clinic used to be a rooming house, right?
So when he said one of his friends came out of the house, I don't know if the house he's referring to is the house where the business is or the rooming house next door, but either way, he said it was a friend, right?
So Matthew, the child who was attacked, said they were kicking me with work boots on and tried to throw me in front of a bus I was waiting for.
Okay, so come on, man. We've got four things escalating here in this grievous assault.
First, you've got the punching repeatedly to the face and to the back of the head.
Number two, you have the crowbar to the back of the head.
Number three, you have...
Kicking and stomping with work boots.
Those are steel-capped, steel-toed boots.
I used to use them when I worked up north.
And they are heavy.
They are dangerous. And you stomp people on that.
I mean, you can kill them like that.
And then they tried to throw him in front of a bus.
Now, a bus is coming up.
They come up pretty fast. They slow pretty quickly.
You throw someone in front of a bus.
It drives over them. They're dead.
So how the hell is this not attempted murder?
And isn't this a setup?
Do you normally just have friends hanging around with crowbars?
No. To me, I think it was premeditated.
At least that would be how I would argue it, if I were a lawyer, which I'm not.
But I would sit there and say, what, how many of you just have friends hanging around with crowbars ready to join you in a fight?
No. He had a friend, and they were going to jump this kid, and they were going to attack him, and it was premeditated, and who knows why.
It doesn't really matter. He's later doing all these random killings.
So how is this not first degree?
Do you have friends who get into a fight, they just show up?
In 30 seconds with a crowbar?
Of course not. They're lying in wait.
In my humble opinion.
This is a minor assault.
What the hell is going on out there?
What the hell is going on with the police?
Well, question asked, potentially, question answered.
So, somebody from somewhere came out and said, stop, he's only a kid, and then they ran off, he said.
Now, after the charges were laid...
Says Matthew.
Wartman attempted to bribe him with money to make the charges go away.
Now, isn't that interesting?
Now, to me, of course, and I think in the law, that is witness tampering, and that is a further crime.
Maybe attempted murder of a child and witness tampering might summon just a little bit more than a $50 fine and some bullcrap probationary measures that they don't even know were done.
So, what the hell happened?
Well, Wartman is bribing at least one person in this whole situation, at least according to the victim.
So, money is flying around this case.
Wartman's willing to spend some money to make these charges go away.
I wonder who else Wartman might have offered money to.
To get charges lowered, to get charges lessened, to make it go away.
Probably never know. Probably no way to prove it.
But we know that Wartman is trying to bribe, at least according to the victim, at least one person in this situation.
I just wonder if he ever ended up offering anyone else any money, this millionaire in a poor rural area, who managed to skate from what looks to me like a clear case of attempted murder with a $50 fine.
So, attempted murder, like in Canada, again, I'm no lawyer, it's just what I've read, right?
Attempted murder, you can get a life sentence.
You have a possibility of parole.
Second degree attempted murder, that's like crime of passion stuff.
Yeah. Five to fifteen years in prison.
Nope. You can punch and crowbar a child, stomp him on the face and body with your steel-toed work boots.
You can try and throw him in front of a bus, get a $50 fine.
But don't worry. The government is totally here to protect you and keep you safe.
And we operate under a rule of law.
And that's why I asked if it was still called the Justice Department.
So back then, the cops failed to protect him.
They failed to protect society.
And then they fail to notify people using the emergency alert system.
This guy is on the rampage for over a dozen hours.
Setting fire, shooting people, imitating a cop.
They don't tell people. But don't worry.
You've got to give up your guns because the government's going to keep you safe.
Going to keep you safe, my friends.
So let's talk about the communications failure.
First alert to the public about the series of events set by Nova Scotia's RCMP's Twitter account at 11.32pm Saturday.
Now that is such a weird decision to make.
I don't even know what to say about it, right?
So what did it read? Hashtag RCMPNS, right?
RCMP Nova Scotia is responding to a firearms complaint in the Portapique area, Portapique Beach Road, Bayshore Road and Five Houses Road.
The public is asked to avoid the area and stay in their homes with doors locked at this time.
Why? Why?
Why Twitter? If you want to warn people, just send out an emergency alert.
See, as you know, I'm sure, right, you've got to have Twitter on, it's got to have push notifications, or you have to be scrolling through it at 11.30 on a Saturday night.
I'm sure that Twitter parties are not very big in Nova Scotia, particularly in the country, on a Saturday night in April.
So, and also there are people who have uncertain concerns Internet access, right?
So as you know, internet access is different from data access through your phone and it's different from messaging access and so on.
So if you get a messaging pushed out by the emergency alert system, I mean, I think we've all had it.
We accidentally leave our phone on at night and you get that meh, meh, meh three o'clock in the morning because some kid's gone missing.
So that's how they should have communicated this if it needed to be communicated, which it needed to be communicated, right?
And they could say, well, you know, but we didn't know how big or how bad it was going to get.
It's like, well, you already tweeted about it.
So if you're already tweeting about it, why on earth would you not send out a wider message?
We didn't want to disturb people?
Well, no. Come on. This is ridiculous, right?
So a lot of people don't have strong or significant internet access, so the tweets may be a little bit less spreadable than an emergency alert.
Terrible. So although Wartman continued killing people for hours overnight, the province's emergency alert system was not used to warn residents.
Instead, the RCMP used social media to get the word out.
After Saturday night, the next tweet came at 8.02am Sunday.
It read. Now, here's the other thing, too.
So we got 11.32 to 8.02am, right?
You got eight and a half hours.
No communication from the police.
Well, they knew they hadn't caught the guy.
They knew that he was on the run. They knew that there was a perimeter.
Why wouldn't you send out an emergency alert to everyone in the perimeter?
I mean, what if you're working till midnight and then you get off and you didn't see the tweet from way back in the day?
What if you're not following the RCMP's Twitter account in a peaceful rural community?
So little crime, why would you bother, right?
It's incomprehensible.
Well, unless...
Just a silly thought.
Unless... Now it's too...
I was just going to say, unless someone in charge was involved in the 2001 thing and knew something bad, well, let's see.
So, 8.02 a.m.
Sunday. The next tweet comes.
Hashtag RCMPNS remains on scene in hashtag Porta Peak.
This is an active shooter situation.
Residents in the area stay inside your homes and lock your doors.
Call 911 if there's anyone on your property.
You may not see the police, but we are there with you.
Hashtag Porta Peak. And that's why I said it was ironic, because there was a policeman, a, quote, policeman roaming around in a, quote, police car, right, which he'd fashioned to look like a police car in an authentic RCMP uniform.
So the police are there with you.
So that indicates to people, of course, that if a policeman knocks on your door, he's there to help.
Except he's there to gun you down.
And why? Eight and a half hours, no communication.
They knew he was on the loose.
They knew he hadn't been caught. They knew, I assume, that he was roaming around, setting fires and killing people.
And they said nothing! Incredible.
And you know what it's like if you follow a bunch of people and you wake up in the morning at 8 o'clock in the morning, something that was tweeted at 11.30 the night before.
It's buried way up. It's buried way deep, right?
Yeah. Whereas an eh, eh, eh, that's going to get your attention, which is what it's designed for, to keep people alive and safe.
A series of further tweets on Sunday morning identified the car Wattman was believed to be driving and reported sightings of him.
There was also a Facebook post from Nova Scotia RCMP the same morning.
Again, it's a peaceful community.
Why would you be following the car?
Twitter. The RCMP Twitter.
Asked why the province's emergency alert system wasn't used to notify people that a killer was on the loose, Chief Superintendent Leather said Tuesday, it's a good question, and I don't have an answer for you at this moment.
Well, it must be nice to be in the government and just say, I don't really have an answer.
Well, you're here to answer that question, which is pretty fundamental and pretty important, right?
And this is Tuesday, right?
Saturday night. Sunday, the guy's killed before noon.
So you got Sunday afternoon.
You got Sunday night. Monday morning.
Monday afternoon. Monday night.
Tuesday morning. And he's still got no answer?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I don't know. I don't know.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
The RCMP had relied on Twitter because of, quote, the instantaneous manner that we could communicate, end quote, Leather said.
I'm not sure what that means exactly.
Does he think that emergency text messages to everyone's cell phone is delivered by a carrier pigeon or smoke signals or some sort of arthritic pony express?
Does he not know that texts are also instantaneous?
I don't... I don't know what this means.
I don't know what this means.
He said, we're aware that we have thousands of followers in Nova Scotia and felt that it was a superior way to communicate this ongoing threat.
Okay, so he's saying it's really important to communicate an ongoing threat.
So why on earth was there eight and a half hours between the 11.32pm tweet and the 8.02am tweet?
Ongoing threat means let people know as things are going on, right?
I mean, imagine. You get the emergency alert, and what happens?
You pick up your phone. You say, oh man, there's a dude around here.
He's killing people, and he's dressed as a Mountie.
And then there's a knock on your door, and it's a Mountie saying, I need to come in.
You just saved someone's life.
Many people's lives, perhaps.
And this was a comment online.
Someone said, if they had put out an emergency alert, more lives would have been saved.
I don't know a soul who's on Twitter.
They might have thousands of Twitter followers, but there are approximately a million people in Nova Scotia.
So only those who follow them get notified, and only if they are awake and on their phones?
Ridiculous! Stop with the stupid excuses.
RCMP dropped the ball, and they need to admit it, or people will never trust them again.
An emergency alert should have been sent out right away.
No explanation needed.
Just, there is a shooter out there, and what area?
That's it. It would have kept people in the area from going outside and made people lock their doors.
And here's the funny thing.
The US Embassy warned The Americans currently in Nova Scotia during the shooting rampage threw an email alert.
I assume they don't have access to the emergency alert system in Nova Scotia, but the U.S. Embassy warned everyone in an email alert, which is somewhat superior to a Twitter alert because emails don't get buried that same way.
And yeah, there's spotty internet out there.
There's lots of old people who aren't social media savvy.
And come on. Come on.
So the account has a little over 91,000 followers out of a million people.
Well, that's low, right?
That's very low.
That's 9%. It's higher than I thought, but anyway.
Many wondered whether a province-wide phone alert would have roused more people, especially those not accustomed to social media.
Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said the province's alert system wasn't used because the Emergency Management Office never received a request from the RCMP to do so.
Quote, we had staff on hand in the morning to be able to do that, but it was not requested.
Later on Tuesday, the Premier told CTV Atlantic, quote, I would say, with the benefit of hindsight, the depth and breadth of this should have been communicated more widely with a number of our agencies, but let's let that unfold.
My main focus right now is to support those families.
Somebody else wrote, publish the percentage of Nova Scotia residents in the applicable area who actually have a Twitter account and had their account actually logged into at the time on their phones.
Then promptly fire the RCMP idiots who made the decision around notification.
And that makes me wonder.
So Nova Scotia, according to someone, has over 100 unsolved homicides.
I wonder if this deranged individual is responsible for any of those.
And who the hell helped him beat up this kid?
And why was that person not charged, to anyone's knowledge?
Brought a crowbar to attack a child.
I'd like to know who that was.
Providing a further update on Wednesday afternoon, Chief Superintendent Leather said the RCMP had in fact been contacted by the Emergency Management Office at 10.15am on Sunday.
Offering use of the alert system, he said the RCMP was in the process of putting an alert together when Wartman was killed by the RCMP at 11.26am.
Right? So, somebody said, there is an emergency warning system that wakes people up at 2am because some couple are fighting and daddy took a child.
As if you could do anything about it in your bed.
But warn people there's a mass murderer on the loose that could burn your house down and shoot your family.
No way! Gotta keep the line clear for more important things.
Sounds like a Trudeau decision.
Well, I don't know about that, but I just thought it was an interesting comment.
Leather said he was, quote, very satisfied, unquote, with the messaging that had been sent via Twitter.
I'm sure he's about as honest as his wife is about that.
So there are, of course, some huge questions.
What on earth happened in 2001?
How did a guy, this guy, and his buddy with a crowbar attempt to murder a child?
Get a $50 fine and some maybe, maybe...
Probation. Who signed off on this guy being cured or fine or happy to go back to work, happy to own a gun again?
Who signed off on this? Who said this is a low-level offense, never going to happen again?
And did anyone buy a boat in that vicinity during that time or get free dentures?
I don't know. Probably never find out.
I would really like it if there were more Canadian reporters actually out there who weren't on the paycheck of the government, the liberal government, who might actually ask these hard questions and not take the police baffle gab as an actual answer.
How can a man and his buddy, in my view, attempt to murder a child and get away with it?
Not even get a record? It's crazy.
But the big concern here, of course, is the endless push by the left, by the liberals, for gun control.
Leftist governments always want to continue disarming the population because government expansion, government control, and the emasculation of the population as a whole.
If more people had been armed in Nova Scotia, the attacker could very likely have been stopped in his tracks.
I mean, he was stopped in his tracks by guns at the end.
It's just that the guns weren't available or were hard to come by or access to them was suppressed in Canada, in Nova Scotia.
In America, 2.5 million crimes a year are stopped because people are armed.
That's almost 7,000 crimes a day, almost 300 crimes an hour, almost five crimes every single minute are stopped because people are armed.
As the old saying goes, when seconds count, the police are minutes away.
Well, in this case, the police were over half a day away, and they weren't informing people, and they weren't using the system which taxpayers set up and pay for to keep the taxpayers safe.
And somebody needs to be held accountable.
I despair whether it will happen.
But it should happen.
Because I don't like the fact that governments don't trust their population with guns.
But police have generally no legal obligation to defend you.
The government is more interested in covering its own butt than protecting you.
It's really up to you. And how is it possible, in a logical universe, That the government trusts you with a vote, but not a gun.
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