Gillian Graham
波特兰新闻先驱报，缅因州
(MCT)
May 8—It was after 10 p.m. on a Saturday in April 2020 and quiet in the small town of Portapique, Nova Scotia, when gunshots rang out and bright flames from a house fire lit the night.
A man had shot at his partner, set fire to their house and in the span of a half-hour gunned down 13 people in the village, including two neighbors whose children were hiding behind a bed. Over the next 13 hours, Gabriel Wortman, 51, dressed as a police officer and driving a replica cruiser, killed nine more people, including a pregnant woman and a constable from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Three others were injured.
Wortman was shot and killed by police outside a gas station on April 19, 2020, the day after his rampage began. Officers searching the Mazda 3 he stole from one of his victims found five firearms and dozens of rounds of ammunition.
这些枪支中有三只枪支 - 格洛克23，鲁格P89和柯尔特卡宾枪半自动步枪 - 来自霍尔顿，近300英里，越过国际边界，来自加拿大历史上最糟糕的大规模枪击事件。
当局后来将确定两支枪是由霍尔顿的沃特曼（Wortman's）的一个朋友购买的，三分之一来自同一个Arostook县小镇的枪支表演。
三名加拿大人向枪手提供了袭击中使用的弹药面临指控。但是，缅因州帮助沃特曼获得枪支的人没有被指控，也可能永远不会被指控。
加拿大大规模伤亡委员会负责检查枪击事件，并推荐使社区更安全的方法上周发布了一份有关袭击中使用的枪支的详细报告以及枪手如何能够访问他们。
In the days and weeks after the shootings, investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Canada and the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives descended on Houlton, where they interviewed Wortman’s friends and acquaintances.
Transcripts of those interviews and the firearms report released last week document how investigators traced guns to a private sale at a Houlton gun show and to Sean Conlogue, a friend of Wortman’s who had given him the Ruger to thank him for doing odd jobs. Wortman took the Glock 23 from Conlogue’s home without his permission, according to the report.
调查人员确定，沃特曼（Wortman）的熟人在枪支展上以1,000美元的现金为他购买了柯尔特·卡宾（Colt Carbine），这是一种非法举动，被称为稻草购买，有人为被禁止购买的另一个人购买了枪支。
It is a violation of federal law for a person to give, sell or transfer a gun to someone who is not a U.S. resident, though Conlogue told police he didn’t know he wasn’t allowed to do so. But that offense is rarely prosecuted because it is usually a low priority for the Department of Justice, which prosecutes around 14,000 firearms cases each year, according to Margaret Groban, a retired federal prosecutor who now teaches a firearms regulation course at the University of Maine School of Law.
当司法部决定是否向某人指控枪支犯罪时，它会考虑到该人是否有犯罪记录，向多人送枪，意识到接收枪支的人的意图，并表示re悔格罗班说。
“It is unusual to prosecute someone for violating this statute,” she said. “He himself has not committed a violent crime.”
联邦调查局的发言人说，该机构不会对袭击中使用的缅因州枪支进行调查发表评论。ATF没有回应有关其参与此案的信息的要求，但上个月发言人告诉加拿大CBC新闻，没有进行调查，并且在当地，州或州或州或州均未提及大规模枪击案的指控。联邦一级。
Conlogue没有回应新闻记者的消息，要求讨论他与Wortman的联系。
格罗班说，缅因州对购买枪支的限制性规定要小于许多其他州，因此被认为是枪支的来源。
“If you opened Uncle Henry’s (classified ads) today, you’d see pages and pages of firearms for sale — and you don’t need a background check for those private sales (in Maine),” she said. “Our guns show up in other states at crime scenes or where it is not as easy to get a gun.”
It’s not surprising, therefore, that guns from Maine ended up in Canada, “but it’s tragic nonetheless,” Groban said.
THE HOULTON CONNECTION
Wortman, a 51-year-old denturist, was a frequent visitor to Houlton, where he sometimes stayed with Conlogue in his home near the town center. Conlogue told investigators that he had met Wortman through a mutual friend at an Irish pub in Fredericton, New Brunswick, decades earlier.
They grew close over time, often going to the Elks club down the street for drinks when Wortman was in town. When Wortman turned 50, Conlogue, who is in his 60s, traveled to Nova Scotia for the party. And when Conlogue was recovering from surgery, Wortman closed his business and came to Houlton for 10 days to care for him.
Conlogue允许Wortman运送他购买的物品 - 主要是摩托车零件，但后来安装在他的复制巡洋舰上的灯杆 - 到霍尔顿的Conlogue家。Conlogue告诉加拿大皇家骑警的调查员，他将盒子堆放在车库中，直到他的朋友来到缅因州取回他们。
有时，这两个男人会聚在一起射击。在Haynesville Woods的Conlogue营地，他们向目标和粘土鸽子开枪。根据委员会的报告，他们还在海恩斯维尔的一个砾石坑和福克斯敦的Conlogue营地的门廊附近一起开枪。
They used various guns, including a commemorative Smith & Wesson, shotguns and two Glock handguns owned by Conlogue. Wortman, whom Conlogue described as an “average shot,” enjoyed shooting the Glocks, the report said.
Conlogue告诉警方，他两到五年前给了他的朋友一只鲁格手枪，以表示对拆除树木和他为他所做的其他奇怪工作的感激之情。
“Mr. Conlogue said he assumed the perpetrator could take a firearm into Canada and never questioned the perpetrator about how he would get the firearm home,” the commission report says.
A few years before the shootings, Conlogue realized Wortman had taken his two Glock handguns from a bedroom he used for storage, according to an interview transcript.
Conlogue told a detective “it broke my heart because he betrayed trust that I’d had in him,” but he did not report the guns stolen or push Wortman to give them back.
Conlogue told a detective that he asked his friend why he had taken them and Wortman told him that he needed them “for protection.” One Glock 23 that Conlogue had purchased in 2009 from a gun shop in Mattawamkeag was found in Wortman’s Mazda. Investigators later determined it was used to shoot multiple people during the rampage.
警方追踪另一枪来自缅因州的一个上校t carbine 5.56 caliber semi-automatic rifle, to an annual gun show in a Houlton arena where table rentals started at $30.
The gun was originally purchased in Ventura, California, then transferred to a man named Gary Sewell, who arranged for his friend Don Dematteis to sell it at the Houlton gun show, held April 27 and 28, 2019, according to the report. Wortman saw the gun at the show, but as a Canadian citizen was not allowed to buy it.
Dematteis told the FBI and ATF that a man who said he was from Massachusetts approached him about buying the gun. Dematteis told him he could only sell it to someone with a Maine driver’s license and a concealed carry permit. The man was later identified through a photo lineup as Wortman, according to the report.
那天晚些时候，戴蒂斯（Dematteis）以大约1,000美元的价格将枪支卖给了拥有缅因州许可证的60多岁男子。该报告称，由于该销售不需要文书工作或背景调查，因此Dematteis不记得该男子的名字。
Detectives later determined the gun was purchased by Neil Gallivan, who initially told investigators he thought he was buying it for Conlogue. But Gallivan later admitted that the money used to buy the gun came from Wortman, the report said.
调查人员通过与目击者的采访了解到，未获得拥有枪支的沃特曼（Wortman）在他的皮卡车后面的Tonneau封面中将枪支走私到加拿大。
LOOKING FOR ANSWERS
事件发生后一个月,Conlogue告诉哔叽ant from the RCMP that what had happened was “a nightmare to me,” according to a transcript of the interview. He said he just couldn’t wrap his head around it, and neither could others around town who knew Wortman.
“I believe, I really believe, and I hate to say it, but (from) what I can understand, what I read and what I hear on the news, he set me up and … that’s what kills me,” Conlogue told the officer. “The thing that eats at me are those people that got killed and that that man was in my house, that man was a monster and I didn’t see it.”
A motive for the violence has never been determined.
Less than two weeks after the mass shooting, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an immediate ban on 1,500 makes and models of “military-grade assault-style” weapons, including the types of guns Wortman used in the attacks.
袭击发生后，联邦和省政府建立了大规模伤亡委员会，以进行广泛的公众调查。它的任务包括检查加拿大皇家骑警的响应，预防犯罪和获得枪支。
The commission is expected to release a final report in November that lays out lessons learned and recommendations that could help prevent and respond to similar situations in the future.
委员会于5月2日发布了一份临时报告，这是调查中必需的步骤，其中不包括建议或调查结果。第二天，委员会向公众介绍了枪支报告。
t的委员会顾问阿曼达·伯德的演讲he firearms report was somber and at times emotional. She paused to compose herself and wiped her eyes before describing the bullets recovered from the body of 33-year-old Kristen Beaton, who was expecting her second baby. Byrd never spoke Wortman’s name, in keeping with a request from Trudeau to avoid giving him “the gift of infamy.”
Groban, the retired prosecutor, said that while some may want to focus on whether or not people should be prosecuted for their role in helping Wortman get guns, it’s more important to focus on how it happened and how to keep it from happening again.
Before giving others firearms, she said, people need to look for any indications that the firearms might be used for violence. Such warning signs might include owning multiple guns or having a history of domestic violence and trauma, Groban said.
“We want people to be more vigilant when it comes to firearms and red flags that may be present in those situations,” she said.
