As soon as reports began to surface from the Nova Scotia shooting tragedy that a female RCMP officer had been killed trying to apprehend the suspect, Prince George RCMP Sgt. Charlotte Peters immediately thought of Heidi Stevenson.
Peters’ worst fears were confirmed when she found out the 48-year-old constable and mother of two was among the 22 victims of Canada’s worst mass shooting. Stevenson’s heroic actions likely saved lives when she disabled the gunman by ramming into the mock RCMP cruiser he had used to pull over victims before he shot them.
Peters was at an earlier stage of her six-month training at the RCMP depot in Regina and graduated a few months ahead of Stevenson and they never saw each other after that, but both are native Nova Scotians who stayed in contact with each other through the RCMP’s internal Facebook sites.
“I did meet her in training and she was a bundle of energy and she had a heck of a smile, which is evidenced in a lot of the pictures that have circulated around since she was killed,” said Peters.
“When this whole situation unfolded we heard a member had been killed, and then we heard a female member had been killed, and that’s when I started going through in my head all the female members I knew in Nova Scotia and Heidi Stevenson is the first one who popped into my head. It was a bad coincidence when that was actually who it was.”
Stevenson, 48, was among the last people shot by the gunman during his 13-hour rampage, April 18-19 in rural Nova Scotia. Stevenson was on her way to meeting another RCMP officer, Chad Morrison, in Shufenacadie. Morrison arrived at the meeting spot first and saw what he assumed was Stevenson police cruiser approaching but it turned out to be Wortman in his mock cruiser, who immediately began firing. Morrison was wounded but managed to drive away and put out a warning on the police radio.
“Heidi, coming along, would have heard this on the radio, so she knew that the next police car she was going to meet was going to be the bad guy,” said Peters. “She took action that would have been based in what she learned in training and tried to use her vehicle in order to push him off the road. So she rammed him and they ended up going head-on and unfortunately that’s when she was killed.”
A bystander was also shot and killed at the scene and the shooter drove off in his SUV. It finally ended when the police converged on a gas station in nearby Enfield, N.S., where the gunman was killed.
“It’s beyond belief,” said Peters, a native of Halifax. “I grew up in Nova Scotia, and I’ve never policed there, but when I go back there I can tell you it’s very peaceful and beautiful place. So for something like this to happen in a place like that absolutely doesn’t make sense. You hear about things like this happening in the United States and obviously we’ve had some situations here in Canada, but nothing to this magnitude.
“It’s a tiny place with lots of big families living all over the province. Lots of people know each other everywhere. This six degrees of separation is probably three or four degrees of separation in Nova Scotia. People know each other and there are so many people who would have been connected to each and every one of those victims. Just unbelievable.”
While mass shootings have become more prevalent in the world, the most sinister aspect of the Nova Scotia incident is the fact the gunman effectively disguised himself as a police officer. For legitimate law-enforcement officers, that is their worst fears realized.
“I think we work really hard to gain the public’s trust and that’s something we can lose quite easily,” said Peters. “I just hope that here in Prince George that people don’t lose faith in us. I’m hoping very much that is just a one-off.
“People need to know that they certainly have the right to question us if they are approached by a member of the RCMP, whether they be in a uniform or not. We all have identification, we all have badges and cards they go with those badges. Certainly if anybody is nervous when approached by a police officer they certainly have that option.”
Stevenson was a 23-year veteran of the force and was well-known publicly as a media spokesperson for the Nova Scotia RCMP. She started out in general duty and worked in high schools as a school liaison in Cole Harbour, where she met her teacher husband Dean.
Stevenson also worked as a drug identification expert and was a member of the RCMP Musical Ride, a troop of 32 equestrian riders who form a cavalry that performs its intricate riding patterns at ceremonial events across Canada.
“I just remember she was incredibly happy and proud to be at depot being what she wanted to be and that was a police officer,” said Peters. “She was a gifted athlete and she was rugby player and was very successful in the fitness program at depot. She was just a very healthy and positive person.
“Like any one of us, she was giving her life to her job and to the people she was protecting and I think it’s very important to stress the fact she was doing what she was trained to do and she died a hero.”
