There’s still confusion surrounding whether an emergency alert should have been issued during the height of the shooting spree.
Nova Scotians received alerts during Easter Weekend surrounding COVID-19 and staying indoors, but no alert was issued when the gunman was loose on his rampage in Colchester County.
RCMP Chief Superintendent Chris Leather said initially during Monday’s press conference that he believed an Alert was issued, but was quickly corrected by a member of the communications team.
“We had relied on Twitter, as my colleague said, because of it’s…the instantaneous manner that we could communicate,” he explained. “We are aware that we have thousands of followers in Nova Scotia and felt that it was a superior way to communicate this on-going threat.”
Premier Stephen McNeil, meantime, noted that no request for an alert was received from RCMP and it will be up to the Mounties to explain.
I’m not going to second-guess why someone with the organization did, didn’t do at this moment in time,” he said. “This was an active environment, I can tell you. Deaths. Gunfire. Let’s give them an opportunity as an organization to explain that to you.”
