Canada IDs lapses that allowed parliament shooting

OTTAWA, Canada – A panicked bystander with a stroller and a breakdown in police communications allowed a gunman to breach Canada’s parliament security last October, according to an independent review released Wednesday, June 3.

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, shot dead a ceremonial guard at a nearby war memorial on October 22 before commandeering a government car and driving it up to the front doors of the Gothic revival building, and entering.

According to an Ontario Provincial Police investigation, Zehaf-Bibeau shot the soldier at the war memorial 3 times in the back, ran to his own car and drove across the street to the entrance of the parliamentary precinct.

There, he got out and commandeered a black limousine.

At the same time, a woman pushing a baby carriage approached a female officer in her car, screaming “Let me in your car. Let me in your car. There’s a man with a gun.”

The officer’s radio message to other security patrols, while she was “trying to prevent a lady who was trying to get into the back seat of her car,” was not clearly heard, according to RCMP Assistant-Commissioner Gilles Michaud.

And so, an officer in another car who might have intercepted Zehaf-Bibeau allowed him to drive right past his cruiser and up to parliament, the OPP report said.

‘A different outcome’

“If that communication would have been clear… I think we would have had a different outcome,” Michaud told a press conference.

Inside, Zehaf-Bibeau was confronted by two unarmed guards.

As he struggled with one of them his gun went off. The bullet ricocheted off the floor and struck the officer’s lower leg.

The shooter then pointed his gun at the chest of the other guard but did not fire, before running up stairs and down the main hall to an alcove near the library. There, he ducked for cover, as four armed officers in a diamond formation pursued him.

Zehaf-Bibeau got off two more rounds inside parliament, including one that narrowly missed an officer from 10 feet away. He was killed in a hail of bullets – 56 in all, including a fatal shot to the back of the head. This was fired after Zehaf-Bibeau collapsed by an officer concerned he might be wearing a suicide vest.

It took Zehaf-Bibeau one minute and 47 seconds to race from the Canadian war memorial to parliament. One minute and 51 seconds elapsed from the time he entered to the time of his death.

“Fortunately, the attacker was unorganized,” the OPP report concluded.

“The end results could have been much worse with the likelihood of many more casualties. If we consider the organized attack in France that occurred in January 2015, anything similar at Parliament Hill with the present security in place would have devastating results.”

He was referring to the Islamist shootings at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store, in Paris. The rampage left 17 dead and saw the French capital gripped with fear for 3 days.

Since the Ottawa attack, Canada has revamped its parliament security posture. – Michel Comte, AFP / Rappler.com