27 / 32
World
27
TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2020
MONTREAL (AFP) - A gunman who
drove a mock-up police car killed
at least 16 people including a fe-
male constable in a shooting ram-
page across Nova Scotia, Cana-
dian federal police said last Sunday,
the worst case of its kind in the
country’s history.
The shooter, identi ied as Gabriel
Wortman, 51, was shot dead by of i-
cers after a 12-hour manhunt across
the eastern province ended last Sun-
day morning.
Among the victims was a vet-
eran female constable with the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP),
which also handles municipal and
provincial law enforcement in
the province.
Police said the suspect had been
on the run since last Saturday night,
when of icers were alerted to shots
ired in the town of Portapique,
around 100 kilometres from Halifax.
Gun violence in Canada is far
less frequent than in the neigh-
bouring United States (US), and
weapons more strictly controlled,
but the killings were the country’s
worst ever, exceeding the toll in
1989 when a gunman murdered
14 female students at Montreal’s
Ecole Polytechnique. “This is one of
the most senseless acts of violence
in our province’s history,” said Nova
Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil.
Public broadcaster
CBC
quoted
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki
as saying police know of at least 16
victims, besides the shooter.
“What has unfolded overnight
and into this morning is incompre-
hensible and many families are ex-
periencing the loss of a loved one,”
Nova Scotia RCMP Commanding
Of icer, Assistant Commissioner Lee
Bergerman, wrote on the force’s lo-
cal Facebook page.
Bergerman said the dead in-
cluded Constable Heidi Stevenson, a
23-year veteran of the force. In addi-
tion to Stevenson, a mother of two, a
male of icer was injured and was in
the hospital with non-life threatening
injuries, Bergerman said.
The National Post
newspaper said
another victim was an elementary
At least 16 killed in Canada’s worst-ever
shooting rampage
Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) tactical unit confer after the suspect in a deadly shooting
rampage was neutralised at the Big Stop near Elmsdale, Nova Scotia, Canada. PHOTO: AFP
school teacher, citing a Facebook
post from the woman’s sister.
Several victims were discovered
both outside and inside a house in
Portapique, sparking the manhunt
through multiple communities,
police said.
“The search for the suspect
ended this morning when the sus-
pect was located. And I can con irm
that he is deceased,” RCMP Chief
Superintendent Chris Leather told a
press conference. He said at one
point, the suspect appeared to be
wearing part of a police uniform and
was driving a vehicle made to look
like an RCMP cruiser.
RCMP tweeted several times
that he was not an of icer and
warned he was considered “armed
and dangerous”.
“The initial search for the suspect
led to multiple sites in the area, in-
cluding structures that were on ire,”
Leather told the news conference.
He said, “There are several loca-
tions across the province where per-
sons have been killed.”
Leather said the gunman
exchanged ire with police at
one point. “Our of icers were in-
volved in terminating the threat,” he
said, adding that the independent
Serious Incident Response Team
(SiRT), which probes certain inci-
dents involving the province’s po-
lice, was now handling that part of
the investigation. SiRT said in a state-
ment a confrontation occurred in
En ield, near Halifax airport, “result-
ing in of icers discharging their ire-
arms. The suspect was found to be
deceased at the scene.”
Police said they had no indica-
tion of a motive and that the killer
acted alone.
“We believe it to be one person
who’s responsible for all the killings
and that he alone moved across the
northern part of the province and
committed, it would appear, several
homicides,” said Leather.
Several of the victims did not
appear to be related to the shooter,
he said, but added that the “the
fact that this individual had a uni-
form and a police car at his disposal
certainly speaks to it not being a
random act”.
Leather said police would be
investigating if there was any con-
nection to the coronavirus, which
has seen non-essential businesses
closed under measures to combat
the pandemic.
“That certainly is an aspect that
we will look at, we’ll examine, but
we have not yet determined if there
is any link to the COVID19 crisis,”
he said.
Media reports said the shooter
was a denturist with clinics in Halifax
and Dartmouth.
Canadian Prime Minister Jus-
tin Trudeau said in a statement he
“was saddened to learn about the
senseless violence in Nova Scotia”,
and he hoped for a full recovery of
the wounded.
The National Post
quoted a coun-
cilor who represents Portapique in
the Municipality of Colchester, Tom
Taggart, as saying the community
was devastated.
He described the community as
a “subdivision in the woods where
people have acre lots along the
shore”, and where Wortman owned
three properties. “It’s absolutely
unbelievable this could happen in
our community. I never dreamt this
would happen here,” Taggart said.
ROME (AFP) - Italian scientists want
the government to conduct psy-
chological tests on a sample of the
population to determine how long
people can stay con ined to their
homes, a report said yesterday.
The
Corriere della Sera
newspa-
per said scientists want to under-
stand how long Italians “are able to
endure a lockdown” in the face of
the coronavirus pandemic.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe
Conte will announce a new set
of social guidelines this week
that could include the tests, the
report said.
Italy entered into a progres-
sively more restrictive lockdown
over the irst half of March that
has since been replicated by most
European nations.
The Mediterranean country’s 60
million citizens have been barred
from walking more than 200 me-
tres from their homes without a sig-
ni icant reason.
Reports of domestic abuse
surged and scientists worry about
the impact of such isolation on the
elderly and the more vulnerable.
Conte’s government is now de-
bating how it can lift the stay-at-
home order and reopen businesses
while there is still no coronavirus
cure or vaccine.
The virus of icially killed 23,660
in Italy - second only to the United
States (US).
Conte is expected to let people
out of their homes for more reasons
when the current lockdown rules
expire on May 4.
Italy mulls psychological
tests to gauge
lockdown impact
BRUSSELS (AFP) - British and Euro-
pean Union (EU) of icials restarted
Brexit trade talks yesterday after a
break because of the coronavirus,
which is making an end-of-year
deal look even more unlikely.
After a irst round in early
March negotiations were sus-
pended for six weeks as of i-
cials focused on the deadly virus
sweeping Europe.
The June deadline set by Lon-
don to assess the chances of an
agreement is now fast approach-
ing. The novel coronavirus has
affected of icials directly, hitting
both EU Chief Negotiator Michel
Barnier and his British counterpart
David Frost - and then, dramati-
cally, putting Prime Minister Boris
Johnson in intensive care.
Despite the ticking clock and
the extra pressure brought by the
worst global pandemic in living
memory, Johnson's government
rules out extending Britain's tran-
sition period to negotiate a future
relationship with the EU.
Britain left the EU on January 31
but remains tied to it until the end
of December 2019. Fears are grow-
ing that no deal will be reached,
meaning that WTO rules with high
tariffs and customs barriers would
come into force between the
United Kingdom (UK) and EU. That
prospect so alarmed the head of
the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) Kristalina Georgieva, that
last week she urged Brussels and
London to extend their deadline,
saying it was in everyone's inter-
ests to reduce uncertainty amid
the economic turmoil wrought by
the pandemic.
But Johnson has remained deaf
to the appeal, despite Britain's
budget watchdog warning that
the coronavirus lockdown could
shrink the country's economy by a
massive 13 per cent in 2020.
Because of virus restrictions,
this week's talks will take place by
videolink. Fabian Zuleeg of the Eu-
ropean Policy Centre warned there
could be "no meaningful negotia-
tions" at this point - because of the
technical limitations of video talks
and because politicians' focus is
on ighting the pandemic.
In these circumstances, it will
probably be necessary to extend
the deadline to avoid Britain crash-
ing out with no deal and facing a
further economic shock on top of
the coronavirus recession, Zuleeg
said. "But so far, Brexit has never
been about the best economic
option. It very much depends on
what price Boris Johnson is willing
to pay for what is portrayed in the
UK as 'sovereignty' and 'indepen-
dence'," Zuleeg told AFP.
A European source close to
the talks said a "Johnson Brexit" -
sacri icing close links to the EU in
order to be free of its rules - was
already going to rattle the econo-
my. "With corona, it's going to be a
double shock for businesses," the
source told AFP.
The virus added another layer
of dif iculty to an already complex
negotiation, where, at the end of
the irst round in March, the two
sides could only note their dis-
agreements rather than make
concrete progress.
London is trying to negotiate
a series of packages in different
domains including ishing, goods,
aviation, justice and energy. But
EU leaders want a single overarch-
ing accord. The thorny problem of
ishing rights - deeply important
to several key EU states, notably
France - could derail the whole
process, according to some
in Brussels.
Brexit talks resume under coronavirus cloud