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Questions are being raised about the Nova Scotia RCMP’s decision to call off an emergency alert warning the public of an armed and dangerous man — who was later shot and killed by police — while he was still at large.
The province’s police watchdog is investigating the shooting, which happened Thursday morning near Chelsea, N.S., some 12 hours after police said they no longer believed there was a risk to public safety and cancelled the alert in Lunenburg and Queens counties.
“I think that we are owed an explanation,” said Pam Hubley, a councillor for the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg, in an interview Friday.
Hubley said her constituents are “angry that they were led to believe that the threat was no longer and that they could go back to live their normal lives.”
“In the rural areas, a lot of people don’t lock their doors,” she said.
Alert issued, cancelled a few hours later
The RCMP issued the alert Wednesday around 6 p.m. local time warning of a “dangerous man with [a] weapon.” It instructed people in the two counties to stay away from Highway 210 in the Chelsea area, to shelter in place and not pick up any hitchhikers.
It cancelled the alert several hours later, writing on its website and social media that residents could resume normal activities as “officers no longer believe there’s a risk to public safety” and the threat had ended.
But it wasn’t until the next morning that police fatally shot the man. The Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) said Thursday that one officer discharged their firearm, striking the man. SIRT did not say until Friday that he had died at the scene.
Brian Meyers, who lives in Chelsea, said he was driving home from a night shift on Thursday morning when he spotted the suspect holding a firearm no more than 30 metres away.
“He locked eyes with me basically and I just kind of looked at him and then I put my head down and took off so I could get around the corner to call 911,” Meyers told CBC News.
Meyers said he wants answers too, adding that he never would have left his wife at home overnight had he known the man was still out there.
No explanation from RCMP
Allison Gerard, a spokesperson for the Nova Scotia RCMP, said Friday the police force does not share information used in its operational decisions.
“Emergency alerts are issued, updated, and cancelled based on the information available to investigators at the time and ongoing assessments of risk to public safety,” Gerard wrote in an email to CBC News.
SIRT said the decision to cancel the emergency alert is not within the scope of its investigation.
Becky Druhan, the Liberal member of the legislature for the area, said she still hopes the agency’s report will have answers about what happened Wednesday.
“I and community members have a lot of questions about how the event unfolded,” she said.
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