generalspeaking

Profile of Mass Killer, Portapique, Nova Scotia

"She ran to my house and said Gabriel was beating on her and she had to get away. She was afraid."
"He had her on the ground, was strangling her ... He was beating on her."
"On that incident, I called the RCMP and I told them what happened, and I said he has a bunch of illegal weapons, and I know because he showed them to me."
"From what I got from the RCMP, because [the partner] would not put in a complaint, as she was scared to death, they basically said, 'There's not much we can do. We can monitor him but there's not much else we can do."
Brenda Forbes, 62, Canadian Forces veteran

The faces of some of the victims killed by a gunman in Nova Scotia. (CBC)

Domestic violence is a scourge that occurs everywhere. Usually a violent, often jealous, and acutely controlling male who threatens verbally, then graduates to physical violence. Women are often fearful of asking for  help, fearful of trying to get away from their domestic persecutor who has made it clear that should she try to escape he will inflict more pain that she cannot avoid. In the case of this now-notorious couple, the man in the common-law partnership threatened the life of her parents.

And usually when a life is at stake, as these matters evolve, a woman will be the victim of another instance of domestic violence, killed by whatever means the man had at hand or planned for, to assuage his rage. In this instance, in a small seaside town in Nova Scotia, Portapique was the venue, and the killer's name will go down in the annals of mass atrocities for having murdered 22 people. This, after beating his common-law wife and tying her up, then leaving the premises. She survived.

He struck out toward neighbours' homes where he shot people to death in a psychotic rage, then set their homes on fire. An emergency 911 call went out to local RCMP who arrived with plans to secure the area, but Gabriel Wortman eluded them and drove out of Portapique toward Truro, stopping now and again to kill strangers while dressed in an RCMP uniform and driving a look-alike police car, on April 18. He had shot 13 people to death in Portapique and went on to continue killing until 22 victims were dead at his hand.

And while the RCMP searched the area for the man, they failed to send out a red alert that would have informed people in the area that they should remain indoors in relation to a mass shooter on the loose. An alert that would have spared some of the people who died in that mad rampage of killing rage. Then it was revealed that a former neighbour of the man had reported him for domestic violence and ownership of a cache of firearms years ago. His erratic, threatening behaviour so disturbed this woman and her husband, both former members of the Armed Forces, they felt constrained to move.

In 2013, Brenda Forbes informed police of reports of her neighbour's vicious assaults against his common-law wife. Gabriel Wortman had moved to the town in the early2000s and acquired quite the reputation. Ms.Forbes had attempted to persuade her neighbour to look for help but potential repercussions kept the woman from acquiescing; sheer fear of consequences. When she approached the RCMP herself for assistance she was interviewed. She had tried to encourage another neighbour one of three men who had witnessed the savage beatings to come forward to the RCMP, but to no avail; he too was fearful.

Ms.Forbes's husband spoke of being shown the weapons cache that Wortman treasured: "He knew I had weapons, being in the military, so he was always one of those guys who had to show others that whatever they had, he had something better", explained George Forbes. "We reported that to the police also." According to police no license was possessed for those weapons the gunman used in his killing spree.

"He dragged her over to my house, pounded on the door. My husband answered the door and [Wortman] ... started screaming."
"I came downstairs, and he was screaming at me."
"And I said, 'If the shoe fits, wear it.; I said, 'I've seen countless women at your place'."
"And he grabbed her, hauled her out the door, and he said, 'You're going to pay for this' to me."
"Well, after that, she was no longer allowed to talk to me, come anywhere near me, nothing."
"My husband ended up going to Africa for the military, and I was basically by myself. I would go to work and come back. And as soon as I got home, he'd show up in his vehicle, park it right outside my house, get out, stand and stare at the house for a good half-hour. And he did that for a few days.
And I went, this is crazy. I'm scared to death now."
"I could no longer live like that. My husband came home from Africa and I let him know what had been going on."
"[Wortman] showed up again, and [my husband] is like,"Yeah, we're moving."
"So we put the house up for sale and it took over a year to sell it. We took a huge loss in it, because I just wanted to get out of there."
"The one thing that I have regret about was the people that bought the house. I should have let them know what he was like, because they ended up getting killed too."

Flowers pile up at a makeshift memorial in the small community of Portapique, N.S. (Jonathan Villeneuve/Radio-Canada)