The death toll in Canada’s deadliest mass shooting rose to 23 Tuesday after police discovered the bodies of four additional victims from last weekend’s rampage in Nova Scotia.
The four bodies were discovered in some of the five properties the gunman, millionaire denture maker Gabriel Wortman, 51, set on fire and “burned to the ground” during the massacre.
The victims now include Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer Heidi Stevenson, a teacher, a nurse, a mother of two, a 17-year-old, a care assistant, a family of three, and a married couple who had four children.
One of the victims, 54-year-old cancer survivor Gina Goulet, was also a denture maker, but police are unsure whether the two knew each other.
The RCMP said it was processing a total of 16 crime scenes that Wortman hit over a 12-hour period.
Wortman was also reportedly obsessed with the RCMP and intended to become an officer when he was a high school student. Wortman wore a RCMP uniform and drove a car disguised to look like a RCMP vehicle during his rampage, which included pulling people over at random and shooting them.
According to an acquaintance, Wortman’s home in the town of Portapique was a “shrine” to the RCMP.
“He was one of those freaky guys, he was really into police memorabilia,” Nathan Staples, who was also approached by Wortman about buying a decommissioned police car, told the Globe and Mail.
Multiple former patients wrote on Facebook about Wortman describing how he bought police cruisers at auction and restored them.
Neighbors reported Wortman struggled with alcohol abuse and was forced to shut his denture clinic down because coronavirus closed all dental facilities with the exception of emergency procedures in mid-March.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to the shooting on Monday by declaring the government would soon be moving forward on several pieces of gun control legislation, including a ban on assault-style rifles.
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