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Thousands to attend funeral service for officers killed in Fredericton shooting

FREDERICTON — Hundreds of people have lined the route of a funeral procession to honour two police officers gunned down in Fredericton last week in an attack that also left two civillians dead.
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FREDERICTON — Hundreds of people have lined the route of a funeral procession to honour two police officers gunned down in Fredericton last week in an attack that also left two civillians dead.

Drizzle is raining down in New Brunswick’s capital, the grey weather mirroring the gloom that has taken over the small city of nearly 60,000.

Thousands of police officers and first responders from across North America are in Fredericton to attend the funeral of Constables Robb Costello and Sara Burns, who died along with Bobbie Lee Wright and Donnie Robichaud.

The families of the fallen officers have already taken their seats at the Aitken Centre on the campus of the University of New Brunswick, where about 4,000 people will attend the funeral service, which is closed to the public.

A red carpet leads up to where Costello’s and Burns’s caskets will be laid.

The service, scheduled to begin at 1 p.m., is being streamed to other locations in the city and will be broadcast live across the country.

Hundreds of officials marched in the parade, which included a massed band, several police motorcycles, and Grimsby, a 10-year-old police horse co-owned by Burns and Const. Stefan Decourcey.

Forty-eight-year-old Matthew Vincent Raymond has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the shooting, and is set to appear in court on Aug. 27.

The lives of the other two victims were also honoured this week by their families and friends.

A public visitation was held Wednesday evening for Wright at a funeral home near Woodstock, N.B., although her obituary said there would be no funeral service by request and her internment would be held at a later date.

Similarly, no funeral was held for Robichaud.

His widow Melissa Robichaud, told The Canadian Press that he had requested to be cremated and that she planned to scatter his ashes Thursday evening along a strip of road the avid motorcyclist had often biked along.

On Friday a judge lifted a publication ban that had been imposed last Monday on court documents revealing details about how the deadly attack unfolded.

The ban came hours after several media outlets had already reported on what they contained.

The newly released documents say the alleged gunman was wounded as he allegedly engaged another officer from his apartment window.