A man accused of opening fire on the Vanderhoof RCMP detachment showed signs of psychosis when he was evaluated following his arrest, a psychiatrist told the court Friday.
On trial for the Nov. 25, 2021 incident in the community 100 kilometres west of Prince George, Paul Nicholas Russell stands accused of nine charges, including counts of attempted murder with a firearm and mischief endangering life.
Some 15 rounds were fired off during an attack that began shortly after noontime. Most of them struck RCMP vehicles or the brick exterior of the detachment but three of the bullets breached the building's windows.
RCMP officers and civilian employees were able to take cover but the potential for injury or worse was there as one bullet passed through a computer monitor at an unoccupied desk and a shot narrowly missed the detachment commander's head.
An active shooter alert was issued via text message, the community's downtown and nearby schools went into lockdown and police from as far away as Prince George, Fort St. James and Fraser Lake rushed to the scene.
Russell was soon arrested and eight hours later was occupying a bay in the emergency room at University Hospital of Northern B.C., where psychiatrist Dr. Mohau Kolisang was brought in to assess Russell over concern about his mental health.
The answers Russell provided to Kolisang's questions suggested the he was "out of touch with reality," Kolisang testified.
"He said that he lived wherever he wanted to live," Kolisang said. "Then he said he lived in the forest so the animals could come in and out."
Russell also said he planned to live off the land and described himself as a mountain man who used a howitzer to trigger avalanches. He also claimed to own thousands of guns, including a British .303 rifle.
"He tended to go off on a tangent and somehow his answers were, I would say, off topic and I was concerned that he might be delirious, which means not quite in touch with reality."
However, Russell appeared to acknowledge partial responsibility for what happened earlier that day, telling Kolisang he took aim at the RCMP vehicles parked outside the detachment because the "cops p----d him off" and that he was frustrated with the RCMP "due to all the stuff that was happening."
Asked if he was concerned about his own safety, Russell replied: "I'm a better shot. I'm a perfect nightmare. I disabled all their vehicles."
Asked by defence lawyer Donna Turko if the statement suggested he intended only to target the vehicles, Kolisang replied that there was "never an expression of homicidal intent."
The court heard that Kolisang was familiar with Russell from an event in July 2021, four months before the shooting incident, when he was taken to UNHBC for a psychiatric assessment after telling police he was seeing auras. Russell was prescribed anti-psychotic medication meant to deal with hallucinations and delusions.
The Crown's case ended with one of Russell's brothers testifying. Matthew Russell estimated that Paul Russell owned about 20 guns, all kept in gun safes at his home and once made reference to doing some training with the Rocky Mountain Rangers military reserve unit in Prince George.
Both worked at the same fabricating shop in Vanderhoof where Matthew was a supervisor. He said he could smell alcohol on his brother that morning, likely from drinking the night before, and so put him on easier work at the shop.
But while he and others noticed Russell saying strange things in the days and weeks before, he was known as a heavy drinker and nothing else seemed particularly out of the ordinary on the day in question.
Russell said his brother appeared to have gone home for lunch during the midday break as he usually does and fully expected he would be back at work within the half hour.
"I was pretty sure he'd come back, but he never did," Matthew Russell said.
Turko said she plans to call three witnesses over Monday and Tuesday next week.
Turko said she will seek to show that Russell intended only to shoot at the police vehicles, that any bullets that hit the detachment were stray ones and that he lacked intent to harm anyone.
