Video surfaces of alleged Fredericton shooter
Fredericton blogger didn't realize he recorded alleged shooter Matthew Raymond until a few days ago
A new video has surfaced of Matthew Vincent Raymond, the man accused of firing the shots that killed two Fredericton police officers and two civilians on Aug. 10.
Fredericton blogger Charles LeBlanc knew Raymond only as "Matt" and said he did not realize until a few days ago that he had recorded him last year.
"I almost fainted when I found out that Matt … was my street buddy that I would call," LeBlanc said. "I couldn't believe it."
Raymond is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Fredericton constables Robb Costello, 45, and Sara Burns, 43, and civilians Donnie Robichaud, 42, and Bobbie Lee Wright, 32.
On June 3, 2017, Raymond drew LeBlanc's attention because he was wearing a sandwich board in front of the New Brunswick Legislative Building, protesting the recently passed motion known as M-103, which calls for a national action plan against racism, including Islamophobia. His sandwich board read "No Sharia-law."
"He was just standing there by the legislature and then he gave me his views," LeBlanc said. "He had lots to say about his beliefs of how the Muslim world and the immigrants are going to destroy Canada in his views."
The video spans seven and a half minutes, and in it LeBlanc challenges Raymond by asking where he got his news, and whether he was on any drugs. Raymond says he gets his news from "the Internet."
"Duh, where? Where from? Are you afraid to say where from? What made you so upset?" LeBlanc says in the video.
To which Raymond replies: "I don't go with every bit of info. They talk about the borders and stuff. And they talk about it on Rebel Media."
Raymond also says media outlets are "told be hush-hush" about issues of immigration.
When LeBlanc asks if Raymond is "paranoid," he says no. When he asks if he has mental illness, he says no. When LeBlanc asks him if he's smoking marijuana, Raymond says "[Justin] Trudeau has, so yeah, there you go."
Changing attitude
About a week before the shooting, LeBlanc said he saw Raymond at a local coffee shop where "lately he would just sit down and just focus straight ahead, he didn't move for about an hour."
"He was not moving at all. I took a picture and he never even smiled. So I crossed the street and said, 'Hey, how are you doing? Are you still paranoid?' And I showed him the picture, and he asked me to delete it, and that's what I did."
LeBlanc said from what he could tell, a man he simply knew as Matt seemed changed.
"There, in that video, he was laughing, he was talking away. But when I saw him a week before the tragedy, when I was talking to him and took his picture, I'm telling you, this guy was different."
With files from Catherine Harrop