"I WAS DETERMINED to return to Portapique before the snow fell. Anyone who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder will understand why returning to the scene would trigger and heighten the flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks I experienced that summer. I knew it would be gruelling and awful, but I felt I needed to go. My sisters Janice and Maureen questioned if I was ready, concerned it would be too much for me."
"Staff Sergeant Greg Vardy told me he had experience helping victims get closure this way and would join me. Vardy was a "truth verification" expert with the RCMP, with thirty years' experience assisting in criminal investigations to help determine the truthfulness of witnesses, suspects, and victims. The RCMP were facing intense scrutiny from the families of Gabriel's twenty-two victims and an unborn child."
On April 18, 2020, Gabriel Wortman murdered thirteen neighbours in Portapique, Nova Scotia, and killed nine more people the following day, including a pregnant woman. He died after RCMP officers fired on him at a gas station later that morning. Lisa Banfield, Wortman's common-law partner, endured years of violence and escaped the night his shooting rampage began. Six months later Banfield returned to Portapique and walked officers through her last moments with Wortman in search of proof and closure. Staff Sergeant Greg Vardy, a thirty-year RCMP truth-verification expert, accompanied her. Families demanded an inquiry into RCMP mishandling and notification failures.
Read at The Walrus
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