By Canadian Press

Warrant alleges N.S. mass shooter was seasoned smuggler of narcotics, U.S. guns

Jul 27, 2020 | 3:36 PM

HALIFAX — Newly released court documents say witnesses told the RCMP that the gunman who carried out the April mass shooting in Nova Scotia smuggled drugs and guns from Maine for years and had secret compartments inside several of his properties.

The gunman took 22 lives during his April 18-19 shooting and burning rampage before police killed him at a service station in Enfield, N.S.

Previously blacked-out details from police applications for search warrants, unsealed by a judge on Monday, quote a witness telling investigators that Gabriel Wortman smuggled drugs from Maine and had a bag of 10,000 OxyContin and 15,000 Dilaudid “from a reservation in New Brunswick.”

Another witness told police that neighbours spoke of concealed spaces on Wortman’s properties in Portapique, N.S., and in Dartmouth, N.S.

That included a “secret room” in his Dartmouth denturist clinic, a false wall at his property on Portland Street in Dartmouth and “secret hiding spots” at his warehouse property in Portapique.

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In addition, one of the witnesses told a Halifax police officer he’d heard that Wortman “builds fires and burns bodies” and was a sexual predator as well as a drug dealer.

The warrants say police were looking for firearms, ammunition, explosives, chemicals, surveillance systems, computers, electronic devices, police-related clothing, human remains and “documents related to planning mass murder events” and the acquisition of weapons.

Investigators obtained warrants to search properties owned by the killer — three of them in the northern Nova Scotia village of Portapique, where the 51-year-old started his murderous rampage.

The documents released Monday were unsealed after a media consortium, including The Canadian Press, went to court.

Previously released documents have detailed warning signals of paranoid behaviour and unusual purchases of gasoline by the gunman before his killings.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 27, 2020.

The Canadian Press