Jury hears how a family quarrel led to the shooting of Saskatchewan Mounties

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SASKATOON – Curt Dagenais was in an angry family argument at his mother’s house before he led RCMP officers on a high-speed chase that left two Mounties shot in the head and a third with bullet fragments embedded in her body.

Details of what happened the evening of July 7, 2006, were made public for the first time Tuesday to a jury in a Saskatoon courtroom.

Dagenais sat quietly in the prisoner’s box, his back turned to a packed courtroom.

The 44-year-old has pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murders of constables Robin Cameron and Marc Bourdages, as well as to the attempted murder of Const. Michelle Knopp.

Crown prosecutor Scott Bartlett said in his opening address that all three officers chased Dagenais, who was driving his pickup truck, for 30 kilometres down country roads near Spiritwood, Sask.

Bourdages and Cameron were in a police truck directly behind Dagenais, and Knopp was behind them in another vehicle.

Bartlett said Knopp will testify that she had to stay behind some distance because all the vehicles were kicking up dust and she could only see tail lights.

When Knopp did catch up, the two trucks were parked on a remote trail near a fence.

“She is in the process of unfastening her seatbelt when she hears a bang and a hole appears in her front windshield,” Bartlett told the jury.

Knopp felt blood drip from her ear, then ducked for cover as she heard another bang, he said. She looked up, saw a person pointing at her from near Dagenais’s truck and fired her gun.

Wounded, with bullet fragments in her ear, arm and torso, Knopp then got out of her vehicle.

She saw Cameron, bleeding, in the passenger seat of the RCMP truck. She was shot once in the forehead, said Bartlett.

Knopp next saw Bourdages, unresponsive, lying on the ground. He was shot on the left side of the head.

No one else was around, so Knopp got back into her vehicle and radioed for help as she drove to the nearest intersection. She met officers there and directed them to the trail.

The jury heard that just a couple hours before the exchange of gunfire, Dagenais had a family squabble in Spiritwood.

His parents had been locked in a bitter divorce, and the family was divided in two. Dagenais had taken the side of his father, Art. His sister, Grace Small, was supporting their mother, Elsie.

The couple had been in civil court earlier that day to discuss a property settlement.

Some time after supper, Dagenais walked into the local RCMP detachment and complained to Cameron that his name was on the title of his mother’s home and he wanted some people removed from the premises.

Dagenais left unhappy, said Bartlett.

He next drove to his mother’s home and confronted his sister outside.

Small, the first witness to testify, told court Dagenais was yelling and swearing at her. He ordered Small to leave the house, along with her son and his girlfriend.

“He was very angry,” said Small. “He said, ‘You lied, you lied, you lied.’ But he never said why he felt I lied.”

Small testified her father had been extremely abusive to her mother during their marriage. And although her brother had never been violent before, he had the same look in his eyes that day that she had seen before in her father.

“I grew up with those eyes, watching those eyes in my dad,” said Small.

She said her brother next tried to slap, then shoved her shoulders before taking off in his truck.

Everyone in the house then went across the street to the RCMP detachment to file a complaint. Small also met with Cameron.

Small said they were told not to return to the house, but to go to a nearby pizza restaurant while officers investigated the case.

But on the way to the restaurant, Small said she spotted Dagenais sitting in his truck at the house. Her son went back to the detachment to let police know he was there.

The three officers got in their RCMP vehicles and parked next to Dagenais’s truck. Cameron got out to talk to him outside his window.

Bartlett said at some point, Dagenais started to drive his truck away and Cameron had to step back to avoid a side mirror. She swung an object and smashed the truck’s window.

Dagenais then sped off, tires squealing, and the officers followed in pursuit.

Nine days after the shooting, Cameron, 29, and Bourdages, 26, died in hospital.

Bourdages, married to fellow RCMP Const. Natasha Szpakowski, left behind a young son.

Szpakowski said outside court she feels she has a duty to attend each day of the three-week trial to find out what exactly happened the day her husband was shot dead.

“It’s something that I need to know in order to move forward,” she said. “My son will one day have questions for me and I want to be able to answer them the best that I can.”

Cameron was a single mother from the Beardy’s and Okemasis reserve north of Saskatoon.

Her father, Howard, a former RCMP officer said outside court he expects to hear painful evidence but he wants to know the details.

“As a family, we’re here for the answers,” he said. “Robin’s brothers and sisters have asked what really happened, and I couldn’t answer that. And we’ll know as the trial goes on.”