A 24 hour manhunt is finally over. Sounds of celebration can be heard in the streets of Moncton, New Brunswick tonight as people come out of the homes they have been confined to for over 24 hours.
Yesterday evening, a young man, Justin Bourque, deliberately stalked and ambushed 5 RCMP ( Royal Canadian Mounted Police). He shot all five of them, killing three and injuring two, one seriously. The Police were responding to calls from concerned citizens who had seen Bourque walking in their neighbourhood, in full camouflage, loaded with two guns, a crossbow. From a picture someone had taken of Bourque walking around, the police realized he also had several knives and lots of ammo. And he wanted to shoot cops.
RCMP quickly began cordoning off the area around the northern subdivision of Moncton and called for backup first from the city, and then from the entire province. More than 300 answered the call. People were told to stay in their homes and go down to their basements and leave all their lights on, including their outside lights.
Searching that area was not easy.That part of the city was a mix of homes, businesses and a wooded area in the middle. The wood was heavily treed. Just a large area of bush. Throughout the night and into the next day there were a couple of sightings, but they came to nothing.
Early on, the police realized that Bourque had a smart phone. He had posted to his FaceBook page. Unbelievably, people were messaging and posting back and forth and commenting on his FB page, giving away the details of the manhunt. Shortly after, the news teams were asking people to stop posting on social media, and the news stopped giving any real details about what was going on.
That went on for 20 hours. We heard little from CBC news, just repeats of previous broadcasts from the evening.
Just an hour ago, they caught him in the wooded area behind some houses.
This kind of thing is rare in Canada. The last time someone deliberately killed several police officers was in 2005 in Alberta. Another young man fired on police responding to a call at his ranch. I can't remember the details of that one and haven't the time to look it up.
Two things that need remarking on in relation to this:
Canada has fairly good gun control laws, and because of this incident, may improve on them. Several years ago, our Prime Minister, Steven Harper, nixed the Long Gun Registry and destroyed all the records from that registry. If I remember right, the RCMP were not in favour of that move. I have no doubt that his decision is about to explode in his face in the coming days.
The other thing that came out of this horrible incident was the insanity of the people posting on Justin Bourque's FaceBook page. If ever there was a case for getting off Facebook, this is it. People were commenting in favour of what he was doing, writing songs to him and about him, deliberately posting details of the search, happy to see the cops die!!! Pure insanity!