A former neighbor of the man who committed the 2020 Nova Scotia mass murder stuck to his story Tuesday that the RCMP did “nothing” when it reported a violent domestic assault.
“You bet,” said Brenda Forbes, who was asked in a public inquiry at the time whether she still held that view, despite a different story from the RCMP investigating officer at the time.
Forbes, a military veteran in his 60s, testified under oath in a public inquiry that he told two “young” constables about the violent attack by the killer against her husband, Lisa Banfield, in the summer of 2013, and that she And her husband had seen weapons at the murderer’s house.
In previous statements to the media following the killings of 22 people in April 2020, Forbes said the RCMP did not follow up after listening to her account when she met him at her workplace in Debert, NS.
Forbes told interrogation on Tuesday that he was told about the attack by the killer’s uncle, Glyn Wortman. She said she called Glynn Wortman in front of officers, put her on speakerphone, and the uncle refused to speak to him directly because he feared Gabriel Wortman would kill him.
“Nothing was ever done. Nothing. Zip,” she testified on Tuesday.
Retired RCMP constable Troy Maxwell told Public Inquiry in an interview that when he spoke to Forbes on July 6, 2013, it was a complaint of the killer “tearing around” the neighborhood in an unmarked police car. Maxwell has not yet testified under oath.
“When I look back at this example, and all I can remember is that there was no domestic allegation. There was no allegation of any other complaint other than that he was driving in an old, unserviced police car,” Maxwell told interrogated interviewees on April 29.
However, his handwritten notes from July 6, 2013, recorded as evidence, include the names of Glyn Wortman as well as Forbes and Gabriel Wortman, with “Lisa” written in parentheses in the margin. When asked by interrogating investigators, Maxwell said he did not know who Glyn Wortman was and wrote “Lisa” because Forbes said it was the name of Gabriel Wortman’s wife.
Glynn Wortman told police about the attack while talking to him in May 2020, saying he and some friends were drinking beer at Wortman’s property, and left after Wortman made a lewd remark about Banfield .
Uncle said that he went to check on Banfield some time later, because he knew Wortman was “off the rails”, and as he approached Wortman’s estate through the woods, he saw her straddling him. , “Strangling her, strangling her. – Not outside her.”
During cross-examination by an attorney for the federal Justice Department _ representing the RCMP, Forbes said that although the killer threatened her after reporting the attack, she did not call the police again.
“The reason I didn’t report it to the police was because… I lost a lot of respect for the police. I didn’t think anything would ever be done,” she testified.
Forbes testified to Wortman’s first awareness of domestic violence in the years since she moved to Portapique in 2002, when Banfield came to her door asking for help after being attacked by a killer. Forbes said she encouraged her neighbor to seek help but recalled that she was afraid of her partner, who threatened her family.
“She was definitely afraid that he would go after her,” she said, testifying from her home in Alberta.
Brenda’s husband George Forbes has not testified at the swearing-in.
However, he has stated in an interview that at a time when the couple were in Wortman’s garage in 2002 or 2003, Wortman opened “a couple’s boxes” containing firearms. He said the weapons “were not your normal weapons you’d buy at a gun show,” and they looked like handguns.
The RCMP did not seek a search warrant for the weapons at Gabriel Wortman’s residence prior to the mass shooting, as evidenced by the investigation to date.
Evidence is presented that in 2010, when Glyn Wortman told police that his nephew was threatening to kill his parents in Moncton, NB, police decided against seeking a search warrant because the murderer’s father, Paul Wortman had been there for more than five years. , saw the weapon in the residence.
Brenda Forbes testified that when she reported Lisa Banfield’s attack to the police, her killer’s fears grew, and she and her husband decided to sell their home, first in Truro, then Halifax, and, of the killer, in Halifax. After encountering, to Alberta.
Forbes became emotional as she testified to her regret for not telling the buyers of her home, John Zahl and Joan Thomas, about the danger they believed Gabriel Wortman posed to the community. was.
“The people who bought it, he killed them and he burnt the house down,” she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 12, 2022.
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