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MONTREAL // Scores of Canadian police scoured a city in the eastern province of New Brunswick on Thursday, hunting for a man believed to have shot dead three officers and wounded two others in a brazen attack.
Residents were told to remain in their homes in Moncton behind locked doors, as police searched for the alleged shooter, 24-year-old Justin Bourque, who was described as armed and dangerous.
“Stay home, stay safe. If you cannot get home, seek out a friend or family and remain there until you are advised otherwise,” Moncton mayor George LeBlanc said.
Local media published a photograph of a man in military camouflage clothing and a black headband carrying a rifle and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police tweeted a similar image of a suspect wielding two guns.
The suspect used those guns when he confronted police in a street in Moncton on Wednesday evening, killing three officers and wounding two.
The wounded officers, known in Canada as “RCMP members”, were in stable condition, said Dhany Charest, a surgeon at the local hospital where they were being treated.
Initially, a third person was reported wounded but it later turned out this was in an unrelated incident.
The RCMP told residents to stay inside and barricade their doors as they combed a wooded, north-east neighbourhood.
“If you live in the marked area stay inside/lock doors. Roads blocked. Traffic disrupted. Avoid area,” the RCMP tweeted.
Schools as well as some businesses, shops and public services stayed shut and buses were pulled off the roads as the manhunt continued in this city of 70,000 where the streets were largely deserted, according to local television footage.
On what appears to be his Facebook page, the suspect posted extracts from a song by American heavy metal band Megadeth just before the shooting.
He took letters from the refrain of the song and spelt out the letters of the word freedom and ultimately wrote, “This spells out FREEDOM, it means nothing to me.”
Sean Gallacher, who lives near the area where police were concentrating their search, said he heard what he now believes were gunshots but initially thought his daughter had dropped some toys on the floor above him.
“I was downstairs and heard a few bangs,” said Gallacher, 35.
Daniel St Louis, a commercial photographer in Moncton, was among the first on the scene. He came across two police vehicles on different streets with blood visible inside.
One of the vehicles, a marked police cruiser, was surrounded by shattered glass. The other, an unmarked SUV with its lights still on and the driver’s side door left open, had several bullet holes through its front windscreen.
St Louis said he saw something shortly after that will always haunt him.
“I walked over and I saw two feet, facing the street, toes up,” said Mr St. Louis, 51. “I realised, ‘Oh my God. There’s somebody down.’ As I got close, I realised it was an officer and this is not a good situation.”
Mr St Louis said he doesn’t know what to make of the tragedy.
“Our quiet little city, what is going on here?” he said. “How is this happening to us? It always happens to somebody else.”
Danny Leblanc, 42, said he saw the shooter in the distance on Wednesday evening, wearing a camouflage outfit and standing in the middle of the street with his gun pointed at police cars.
The construction worker said he believed it was an RCMP officer until he heard a burst of automatic gunfire coming from the man’s gun.
He said he quickly retreated into his home and remained there with his family. At one point a neighbour posted on social media that their kitchen window was shattered by gunfire.
Mr Leblanc said few people on his normally quiet street were sleeping as they awaited word at midnight on whether an arrest had been made.
Word that police had been killed shocked the city, Mr Leblanc said.
“It’s devastating. I don’t know if he was on a hunt for them, or what,” he said.
RCMP spokesman Damien Theriault said authorities wanted to end the manhunt as soon as possible. He choked back tears after he was asked how police were dealing with the shootings. “We are professionals,” he said.
Asked how he was dealing with his grief, Mr Theriault said he personally knew the officers. He broke down, unable to complete his sentence, and excused himself.
Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States, and the killings have spurred an outpouring of grief on social media.
The last mass killing of Canadian police took place in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, in 2005, when a gunman killed four RCMP officers.
* Reuters with additional reporting from Associated Press.
