Moncton shooting: Police from across Maritimes ready to help

Police from P.E.I. are in Moncton, and others from across the Maritimes are on standby, as the hunt intensifies for a suspect who allegedly killed three RCMP officers and wounded two others.

Three members of Charlottetown Police and a team of P.E.I. RCMP are in Moncton. Officers from Nova Scotia are also standing by, ready to help if needed.

New Brunswick RCMP said the police received a call at 7:20 p.m. AT Wednesday about a man wearing camouflage and carrying guns.

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A police manhunt is still underway for Justin Bourque, 24. RCMP say Bourque is considered "armed and dangerous."

Paul Greene, an RCMP spokesman, said Bourque was last seen in a wooded area.

Many schools and businesses in the Moncton area were closed Thursday with police asking people to stay in their homes with their doors locked.

Halifax Regional Police Const. Pierre Bourdages says Halifax officers are on standby in case Moncton police, or RCMP elsewhere in the Maritimes, need support. 

“All members of the Halifax Regional Police were deeply saddened with the tragedy in Moncton, which is still ongoing,” said HRP Deputy Chief Bill Morris.

“Our officers are still in shock with what happened. We’ve lost three members of our policing family with others severely injured. Coming into work this morning, [it was] a very sombre mood. You’ve got members here wanting to go to Moncton to help, but realizing they still have a job here to look after our public.”

Morris said this is a difficult time for all involved.

“Our thoughts and our prayers go out to the people of Moncton, especially to the RCMP officers’ families and their coworkers,” he said.

“You hear a lot of this across the border in the States where officers are getting injured and killed in the line of duty but when it’s in Canada, and so close to home, it hits very hard.”   

Morris called the situation an “eye-opener” of the potential dangers police face on the job everyday.

“But, as of now, it’s business as normal with a heightened sense of everybody being out on the street that what happened there can happen here, very easily,” he said.

RCMP Const. Damien Theriault could not say how many police officers were involved in the manhunt.

Theriault, visibly emotional during a news conference early Thursday morning, asked the public not to disclose any information about the police operation or locations of officers on social media.

Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil has five brothers, a sister-in-law, as well as nieces and nephews involved in law enforcement, he says.

"Each and every day, their families send them off to work with the full expectation, like each of us, that they would be coming home. It's just unfathomable to try to understand what's taken place in Moncton and the unbelievable pain that those families are now suffering simply because their loved one went to work to protect us."