WARNING: This story contains graphic details of a violent event.
A paramedic’s account of arriving at a fatal shooting that he assumed was safe when in fact the shooter remained on scene will be cross-examined this week in the trial of a man who killed a police officer and wounded two others during a wellness check in Bourget, Ont.
It’s not in dispute that Alain Bellefeuille killed OPP Sgt. Eric Mueller and wounded constables Marc Lauzon and François Gamache-Asselin before dawn on May 11, 2023.
In question is whether he knew he was shooting at police and whether he was acting in self-defence when he repeatedly opened fire on them.
Bellefeuille is on trial in Superior Court in L’Orignal for first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder, and has pleaded not guilty. He’s expected to testify in his own defence after the Crown closes its case.
One of the first four paramedics to arrive at Bellefeuille’s house — Christian Larochelle, who was accompanied that night by Stéphane Huppé, Yan Bellefeuille and Jean-François Fillion — testified on Friday about walking up to the house, thinking the scene had been made safe.
Instead, Larochelle found Bellefeuille standing on the deck with his arms up. Mueller was bleeding out in the mudroom with Bellefeuille’s loaded long gun placed across his chest. Lauzon was on his knees on the lawn, and Gamache-Asselin was hiding in the woods, thinking someone was trying to follow and kill him, the trial earlier heard.
Lauzon didn’t answer Larochelle’s questions about whether the scene was safe. His eyes were open but his arm was torn open. Larochelle then approached the deck.
‘He broke into my house’
More video from Mueller’s body-worn camera was played in court. It was covered by something, but Bellefeuille is heard saying, “A police officer is down. A police officer’s down right here. He’s breathing. A police officer is down right here inside, come in, come in. He’s inside the house, he’s breathing still. He’s still breathing.”
“Are you alone here?” Larochelle asks Bellefeuille.
“I am alone.”
“Is there another officer?”
“He broke into my house. He came in, that’s it. He’s still breathing,” Bellefeuille says.
“Don’t move, don’t move. Is there anyone else in the house? I want you to step back, please. Please step back.”
Larochelle testified that Mueller had lost a severe amount of blood, and that he knew the outlook for him wasn’t good. He also knew he and the other paramedics weren’t safe, but “at that point, it was too late.”
They loaded Mueller into an ambulance, and as Larochelle was about to start driving, his partner shouted that Mueller’s heart had stopped. They started CPR and continued with it for the 40-minute drive to The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic campus trauma centre. But not long after they arrived, Mueller was pronounced dead.
Still more video from Mueller’s camera showed it being thrown onto the lawn.
Trial resumed last week after pause
The trial resumed April 22 after being adjourned for a week.
Last week, OPP Const. Justin Boyd testified about heading to Bellefeuille’s house in Bourget after hearing over the radio that shots had been fired at officers, and about the role he played in searching the area and transporting Bellefeuille to an OPP detachment and Ottawa’s Montfort Hospital.
When Boyd arrived, it was unclear where Lauzon and Gamache-Asselin were.
Mueller was in the care of paramedics, and unknown to Boyd and other officers at the scene, so was Lauzon.
Confused, ‘chaotic’ scene
As Boyd and others started to talk about how to find them, the situation became “pretty chaotic,” Boyd testified. The officers eventually lined up shoulder to shoulder and pushed into the woods to search before deciding the terrain was too difficult for a hurt person to hide in.
As they came back out, Boyd found Mueller’s body-worn camera lying in the grass, still recording.
A video clip from the camera was played in court of Boyd finding it, in which a gunshot is also heard.
Const. Ionut Mihuta — who had arrested Bellefeuille — is heard asking, “You fired your gun?”
“Misfire! Misfire, misfire,” says Boyd, speaking for his colleague Const. Pierre Dubois, who had accidentally fired his long gun into the ground once in sight of Boyd.
“Check that way,” Mihuta says. “Go in a straight line! Shooter ready, OK? Safety off. Watch your shooting, OK? Watch your fingers,” Mihuta says before the clip ends.
Bellefeuille repeatedly punched by arresting officer
More officers flooded the scene, and Lauzon and Gamache-Asselin were found, Boyd said. He was then asked to help take Bellefeuille to the Rockland OPP detachment.
In a cell, paramedics checked Bellefeuille for injuries and took a long time examining a contusion on his head. Court heard on April 14 that Mihuta had violated police protocol by repeatedly punching Bellefeuille while Bellefeuille was lying on the ground being arrested and saying he didn’t know he had shot a cop.
Audio of the dramatic exchange was captured on Mihuta’s body-worn camera.
Mihuta screamed at Bellefeuille: “I got this shotgun at your f–king head! Just f–king do something so I can f–king shoot you, you piece of s–t!”
Asked about punching Bellefeuille in cross-examination, Mihuta testified that his emotions got the best of him, and that he didn’t mean his threat to shoot Bellefeuille.
“I knew that Sergeant Mueller may not live. I knew at that point that within the next couple hours, a wife will get the worst news of her life, that her husband is not coming back home. Two kids will be orphans without a dad,” he testified.
“We don’t shoot people in our jobs. We do not. It’s not, I wouldn’t shoot anyone that is unarmed or something like that.”
Emotional ride to hospital
Paramedics eventually decided to take Bellefeuille to hospital for examination and treatment.
During cross-examination of Boyd, defence lawyer Leonardo Russomanno played video footage from Boyd’s body-worn camera depicting about 20 minutes of the ambulance ride to Montfort Hospital. It shows Bellefeuille from behind as he’s sitting up hunched forward on a gurney in only his underwear (his clothing had been removed by paramedics), with his hands cuffed behind his back. A paramedic tries asking questions, but no discernable responses are heard.
Bellefeuille appears to cry several times, his shoulders bobbing up and down, and occasionally the paramedic places a hand on his shoulder.
Justice Robert Pelletier instructed the jury to only consider Bellefeuille’s physical and emotional state in the video, which could become relevant in Pelletier’s final instructions for the jury before deliberations.
The Crown’s next witness was OPP forensic identification officer Brittany Falls, who helped document and catalogue the scene and the evidence found. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the jury was shown photos of the mudroom with the blood-soaked floor where Mueller was found.
Also shown was Bellefeuille’s bedroom wall with nine bullet holes in it (he fired at Mueller and Lauzon from inside the bedroom), a box of ammunition in his closet, his living room window with bullet holes in it, two OPP cruisers outside with bullet holes in them, spent casings from Bellefeuille’s long gun inside and outside the house, and three spent casings from an OPP handgun in the house.
Lauzon’s sidearm was found to be missing three rounds, Falls testified.
The trial continues Tuesday with cross-examination of the paramedic who testified Friday.
