No charges warranted against N.S. Mounties who shot up fire hall during mass shooting: Ontario watchdog

A second investigation has determined no charges should be laid against two RCMP officers who shot at a fire hall in Nova Scotia on the morning of April 19, 2020.

No one was struck in the incident but it left people badly shaken and distrustful of the RCMP.

The two officers were pursuing a man who was in the midst of a murderous rampage across central Nova Scotia. By the time he was done, 22 people had been killed.

The Onslow Belmont fire hall had been designated as a refuge for people displaced by the shootings.

An RCMP officer in a marked police cruiser was stationed outside the hall for security. The gunman was driving a car that had been made to resemble an RCMP cruiser.

When the two officers, constables Terry Brown and Dave Melanson, came upon the fire hall, they thought the police car out front belonged to the gunman.

The officers brought their unmarked car to a sudden stop in front of the hall and started shooting. They hit a sign, a garage door and one of the fire trucks.

'A lawful excuse' to open fire

The shooting was referred to Nova Scotia's Serious Incident Response Team to determine whether the officers' actions warranted criminal charges. SIRT concluded they did not.

The chief and deputy chief of the fire brigade disagreed with the decision. They lobbied for the investigation to be reopened, arguing that new information had come to light during the hearings of the Mass Casualty Commission.

Onslow Belmont Fire Brigade Deputy Chief Darrell Currie, left, and Fire Chief Greg Muise lobbied for the investigation to be reopened, leading to the referral to Ontario. (Steve Lawrence/CBC)

The case was referred to Ontario's Special Investigations Unit for another assessment. It affirmed the SIRT decision in a report issued Friday.

It concluded that the decision to open fire did not constitute criminal negligence in the context of an ongoing manhunt.

"The totality of the evidence establishes that the SOs (subject officers) had reasonable grounds to believe the person they saw, who was disobeying their orders, was the mass murderer who had, in the preceding hour, killed three more persons," the report states.

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"Viewed objectively, in light of the protections afforded to peace officers by Section 25 of the Criminal Code, the totality of the circumstances, in what was a rapidly unfolding series of events, establishes that SO1 and SO2 had a lawful excuse when they discharged their firearms."

Brown and Melanson defended their actions when they testified before the MCC in May 2022.

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