An inside account of what 911 call takers experienced during N.S. mass shooting

One of many individuals working the 911 name centre the evening of April 18, 2020 has supplied a glimpse into what it was like when individuals from Portapique, N.S., started calling to report gunshots, murders and fires.

Jennifer MacCallum was one of many civilian supervisors on the RCMP’s operational command centre that was primarily based in Truro on the time. She spoke final September to the inquiry investigating the murders of twenty-two individuals.

MacCallum says the opposite supervisor, Donnalee Williston, took the primary name at 10:01 that night. The individual on the cellphone was Jamie Blair.

“My neighbour is cracked the f–k up,” Blair is quoted as saying in a transcript of the decision.

She tells Williston that she thinks her husband, Greg Blair, has been shot. She says he is mendacity face down on their deck and never transferring.

“There’s a police automobile within the f–king driveway,” Blair provides. 

She then goes on to clarify to Williston that whereas there’s a police automobile, there’s not a policeman. She offers Williston the title Gabriel, and says he is her neighbour. She additionally says he has an enormous gun.

Jamie Blair could be heard on the cellphone, calling her youngsters to come back into the room. There are whispers, then a scream, and a voice says “assist me” earlier than the decision drops.

It is a name that may change the dynamic within the command centre for the subsequent 13 hours.

“There isn’t any crying on dispatch … so there’s nonetheless numerous work to do there,” Williston later instructed fee legal professionals in an interview.

MacCallum mentioned she noticed Williston kind up her report following the Blair name to get emergency responders on the street.

Then she requested Williston whether or not she thought the decision was “actual” since they’ve taken calls from individuals experiencing psychological well being points who’ve made studies to 911 which have turned out to be false.

Williston assured MacCallum she thought the decision was real. They then began the method of getting police to reply.

It was then, MacCallum mentioned, {that a} second name got here in. This time it was the Blair youngsters.

They’d escaped their dwelling, the place their mom and father had simply been murdered, and had taken refuge within the dwelling of their neighbour, Lisa McCully. She, too, had fallen sufferer to the gunman and her physique would later be found on the bottom exterior.

In accordance with MacCallum, the look on her colleague’s face mentioned all of it.

“I might inform from his facial features that what we had was now getting larger. So, I ran over to the opposite aspect and what’s after I was briefing the chance supervisor and after we began making our cellphone calls,” mentioned MacCallum.

She requested the decision taker if he wanted something, however she mentioned he could not discuss to her as a result of he was nonetheless speaking to the kids. He would keep on the cellphone with the kids for 2 hours till they have been evacuated by police.

“The questions that have been coming in, the mayhem … the unimaginable concern that was coming from the call-take aspect over to dispatch was one thing that I had by no means lived any of my shifts with earlier than,” mentioned MacCallum.

Software program glitches

Contained in the centre, the software program program used to maintain a “rolling log” of data began to have glitches that evening due to the amount of fabric they have been attempting to enter.

MacCallum mentioned they got here to rely extra on person-to-person contact to ensure everybody who wanted it had probably the most up-to-date info.

Just like the RCMP, MacCallum mentioned individuals within the name centre struggled with the concept the gunman was utilizing a completely marked police automobile. They had accounted for all RCMP automobiles assigned to Colchester and Cumberland counties that evening. 

After Jamie Blair mentioned it was a police automobile, her youngsters and the McCully youngsters additionally instructed the 911 operator that they noticed a police automobile. The kids additionally repeated the title Gabe, and MacCallum mentioned she was in a position to get the title Gabriel Wortman from that. 

She regarded him up and found he was the registered proprietor of a Ford Taurus decommissioned police automobile. 

“Then there was one other Taurus that I do know after I was speaking to my RisePEI Regional counterparts that the ERT had discovered at his workplace. So, it was like … like what number of … I believed they have been carried out, that is it,” she mentioned.

She instructed the fee she did not be taught the specifics of the reproduction cruiser till the next morning after her shift had ended. 

Co-ordinated rescue from woods

MacCallum mentioned that as soon as a critical-incident commander takes over a file, the 911 centre can often take a step again and chill out a bit. She mentioned that wasn’t the case that evening.

MacCallum mentioned that within the midst of every little thing else, she was on the cellphone with Clinton Ellison. Ellison was hiding within the woods of Portapique.

He’d gone on the lookout for his brother, Corrie, solely to find him useless. Then Clinton Ellison noticed lights and ran and hid.

He thought it was the gunman. It was really the primary RCMP group to enter Portapique that evening. 

MacCallum mentioned she stayed on the cellphone with Ellison till he was rescued by the Emergency Response Crew.

She was nearing the top of her shift when the gunman’s associate, Lisa Banfield, emerged from the woods. She confirmed up on the dwelling of a neighbour, Leon Joudrey, who instantly known as 911.

“He ended up passing the cellphone to her, and I spoke to her, and I spoke to her for a couple of minutes till ERT was in her driveway. After which I instructed them each to exit with their arms up and be retrieved by them,” she mentioned.

MacCallum instructed the inquiry she was shocked to listen to Banfield had survived. Earlier within the evening, her group pinged Banfield’s cellular phone a number of instances in an effort to search out her location, with no response.

No break from duties

Williston, who took the unique name together with many others that evening, left her job in August 2020. She believes RCMP might have carried out extra to assist workers get better from their trauma.

“I really feel like they need to have adopted the mannequin after the Moncton shootings and all of the dispatchers have been despatched dwelling for 3 or 4 weeks, and similar to the entire employees, whoever labored that evening wasn’t allowed again within the constructing for an enormous block of time,” she mentioned.

“We have been again straight away, and I believe that was fairly damaging.”

Williston mentioned that they had three scheduled days off and one other to debrief. 

MacCallum mentioned that evening additionally affected her.

“On the time I used to be very adamant that I used to be going again to work,” she instructed investigators. 

MacCallum mentioned they bought good assist however she would have been higher off taking a break.

“So it may need been extra prudent, now that I look again, to have taken, like, proper off the bat, as quickly because it occurred everyone’s given a month off.” 

As she ended her interview, MacCallum mentioned the lack of expertise additionally bothered her.

“I simply want the RCMP had been just a little bit extra up entrance with all of the stuff that we had carried out as an alternative of being just a little extra quiet or shielded from the general public as a result of all that we did is simply let the general public go down a rabbit gap,” MacCallum mentioned.

“And so many rumours, particularly in rural communities, have been began, and it simply did no good for no one.”