Stettler RCMP continue to piece together what they are calling a random act that lead to a 31-year-old Red Deer father shooting a Stettler woman and later ending his own life in an armed standoff on Monday.
“We are still looking for some answers as to why this occurred but hopefully we will have those answers soon,” said Const. Clayton Dellowski, of the Stettler RCMP detachment.
“It was bit of a shock to this community as a whole when something like this happens, especially when it was so random.”
Four days later, police are still obtaining evidence and conducting interviews after the man, identified as Dustin Goddu, 31, ended his life on Monday.
Police found his body and a gun next to him in a rural, treed area near Coronation, after shooting a Stettler woman, identified as Krista Dryden, 39, that morning.
Dellowski said on Wednesday that Goddu’s vehicle has been processed by their forensic unit. He couldn’t say if there was anything located in the vehicle that was being investigated further.
When asked if the RCMP had any past dealings with Goddu, City RCMP media liaison Cpl. Kathy DeHeer said he wasn’t on their “radar for anything.”
“He wasn’t known to police,” she said.
“There were a few things that I have seen that are actually, totally false,” Dellowski said.
Goddu’s friends, family and co-workers at Red Deer’s Parkland Funeral Home and Crematorium are reeling at how the man, they knew as kind and compassionate, would be in the middle of such tragic circumstances.
Gord Mathers, owner of Parkland Funeral Home and Crematorium, says it has been a tough couple of days. He describes Goddu, a director at the home for seven years, as a good person who “did a wonderful job and worked hard.”
He said the home would be posting funeral information online after they got in touch with family members.
“They were supposed to come in yesterday but they didn’t, there is just so much right now,” Mathers said on Wednesday.
Dryden was shot shortly before 9 a.m. She was walking along a Stettler road, about 80 km east of Red Deer, moments after she dropped off a lawnmower at a Stettler repair shop.
She was transported to the Foothills Hospital in Calgary, and treated with non-life threatening injuries — a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
Police say Coronation RCMP received information moments after the shooting and located Goddu’s vehicle on Hwy 12 between Coronation and Castor. After being pulled over, he subsequently fled on foot to a forested area that the Emergency Response Team surrounded all day. Dellowski said negotiators would have been on scene, hoping for a peaceful resolution.
Regan Finlay, an employee at Bill’s Farm Supplies, a Stettler business located close to where Dryden was shot, is thankful she is OK.
He says the community feels safe and understands that this was an isolated instance.
jjones@www.reddeeradvocate.com