Skip to content

Death came in seconds

The mother of one of four Alberta Mounties shot dead by a gunman sought reassurance from the coroner on the first day of an inquiry that her son didn’t suffer.
Parry
Bailiff Robert Parry speaks with reporters at the provincial court in Stony Plain

STONY PLAIN — The mother of one of four Alberta Mounties shot dead by a gunman sought reassurance from the coroner on the first day of an inquiry that her son didn’t suffer.

“How soon before he would have died?” Grace Johnston, tears catching her voice for long pauses, asked Dr. Bernard Bannach.

Bannach told her that Const. Leo Johnston was shot four times. One of the bullets slammed into his back, severed his spine, hit a lung, then the heart, and shattered into three fragments, some of which came out his cheekbone.

“It would have stopped his heart immediately,” Bannach told her.

“There was enough oxygen in the brain for another 10 to 15 seconds. After that he would have passed out and would have been clinically dead.”

“Ten to 15 seconds,” Johnston repeated back to him.

“Ten to 15 seconds.”

Johnston, 32, along with fellow constables Anthony Gordon, Peter Schiemann and Brock Myrol, was ambushed March 3, 2005, by James Roszko in a Quonset hut on his property near Mayerthorpe northwest of Edmonton.

The fatality inquiry, mandatory in all such deaths, had been delayed until now while other court proceedings were ongoing, including the conviction of two of Roszko’s accomplices, Shawn Hennessey and Dennis Cheeseman.

Roszko, a 46-year-old loner with a history of violence and criminal behaviour, shot the four officers with a .308 Heckler and Koch semi-automatic assault rifle.

Police found 19 shell cases on the dirt floor of the hut that day. Bannach told Judge Daniel Pahl on Monday that the wounds the officers received were many and grievous.

Gordon, standing at the entrance to the hut when Roszko opened fire, was shot twice through the torso in criss-cross fashion. One shot, said Bannach, went through his back and hit his heart, killing the 28-year-old married father of two almost instantaneously.

Johnston and Schiemann were halfway into the hut. It’s believed Roszko was hiding behind barrels at the back of the massive half-circular metal structure.

Johnston, an ace marksman, was the only one to get a shot, although the bullet pinged harmlessly off the butt of a handgun tucked in Roszko’s waistband.

Johnston was a 32-year-old newlywed from Lac la Biche, Alta. He was struck twice in the pelvis and lower torso. A third bullet shattered his left arm. The fatal bullet pierced his heart.

Schiemann, unarmed and off duty, was dressed in jeans, sneakers and a jacket that day. Bannach testified the native of Petrolia, Ont., was shot three times. One bullet went through his back and into his right lung. He would have been dead in about 30 seconds, said Bannach.

Schiemann, at 25, was the youngest of the victims. He was also shot in the thigh, shattering his femur, and in the wrist.

Previous court hearings have been told Myrol was trying to get to cover when Roszko killed him with two shots. One hit him in the hip; the other entered behind his right ear and came out the forehead, said Bannach.

“It resulted in a devastating head injury, and the result would have been immediate death,” Bannach said in provincial court.

Myrol, 29, was born in Outlook, Sask., and was engaged to be married. He had been a Mountie for just 17 days.

The autopsy on Roszko confirmed previously reported stories on his fate. After killing the four officers, he left the Quonset hut and was confronted by Const. Steve Vigor, an auto-theft RCMP member, who had just arrived and was racing to the door after hearing gunfire.

They exchanged shots. Roszko missed but was hit in the wrist and right femur. He also had facial cuts consistent with bullet shrapnel.

Roszko managed to get back into the hut, where he placed the rifle’s barrel against his chest and fired. Bannach said the bullet went through the heart and out the back.

Toxicology tests showed Roszko had traces of cold medicine in his body but nothing else of note.

Three parents of the RCMP officers sat in the front row Monday. Johnston was joined by Doreen Jewell-Duffy, Gordon’s mother, and Don Schiemann, father to Peter.

The Myrols were not there. Last week, Colleen Myrol said she and her husband would attend some days of the hearing but didn’t need to again hear the horrible details of their son’s death.

Jewell-Duffy cried as the details of her son’s injuries were outlined. Outside, she told reporters it’s hard to relive his death, but necessary to do so.

“It is important to find out what happened to the four boys, and that it will never happen again,” she said.

Schiemann said he won’t speak publicly until after the two-week inquiry is over, but served notice Monday that he wants to know whether the RCMP needlessly put his son in harm’s way.

Schiemann questioned Robert Parry, a bailiff who went to Roszko’s farm the day before the attack to seize his truck. That led to police finding and seizing marijuana plants and stolen automobile parts in the Quonset, which in turn, presumably fuelled Roszko’s murderous rage.

“I was aware he was a police hater and (the RCMP) always felt there was a possibility of confrontation,” Parry told court.

“At any time did you detect a complacency on the part of the officers on the security of the (Roszko) site?” Schiemann asked him.

“Absolutely not,” Parry replied. “They were watching the field and watching the road.”

Some questions remain about the four murders. How did Roszko manage to sneak back into the Quonset hut with police guarding it? How did he get his hands on the murder weapons?

Hennessey and Cheeseman were convicted of manslaughter two years ago for giving Roszko a ride back to the farm the previous night and for giving him a third weapon, a rifle.

The pair were denied standing at the inquiry, but Hennessey’s parents came. Outside court, his father, Barry, renewed a plea to authorities to let his son out of jail.

“We feel bad for the four people who lost their lives and for the families of the four,” said Hennessey. “(But) please look at our side of the story. These two boys had nothing to do with anyone dying.”

Fatality inquiries are held to determine the circumstances surrounding deaths and to make recommendations on how to prevent similar ones. They do not assign blame.