Bank Robbery and Police Ambush in Saanich BC - GVERT

Jon Becker: On June 28th, 2022, the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team, also known as GVERT, was working as a quick response team for a narcotics surveillance, when a call went out of an active bank robbery in progress. Two suspects, covered almost entirely in body armor, and heavily armed with SKS rifles, were robbing the Bank of Montreal branch in nearby Saanich, British Columbia.

The suspects had herded all of the bank patrons and employees into the back of the bank, and then proceeded to wait more than 12 minutes in the entrance vestibule of the bank, hoping to ambush and kill responding police officers.

In accordance with their policy of remaining covert until suspects left the bank to avoid creating a hostage situation, responding officers from Saanich, Central Saanich, and nearby Victoria PD descended on the area and inserted into covert locations around the bank.

The GVERT team left the surveillance and headed immediately to the bank. As they arrived on the scene and gained situational awareness, the two male subjects covered head to toe in armor and armed with SKS rifles with high-capacity magazines exited the bank. The team raced into the parking lot in their surveillance van, deployed a flashbang, and began to exit to affect arrest. As they did, the suspect nearest the van calmly turned and opened fire on the van.

In just a few seconds, six of the seven operators in the van were shot, some multiple times, all of them were injured, and at least one of them was at immediate risk of death.

The remaining team members and Patrol officers returned fire, eventually killing the suspects.

What transpired over the next few minutes can only be described as a heroic performance by team members, and an army of Patrol Officers and other First Responders who quickly transitioned from taking the suspects into custody to searching for a possible third shooter, clearing the bank, freeing the hostages, dealing with numerous improvised explosive devices that they located, and most importantly providing care and transport for their injured teammates.

This is the first of a series that will look at this event through several different perspectives. This episode will be unlike any previous episode of the Debrief, because of the sheer number of people we were able to interview.

The agencies, patrol teams and SWAT team involved in this incident gave us access to more than a dozen people who responded to this event. As a result, we will be seeing this incident from the perspectives of the team commander, team leaders, detached sniper element, assaulters, medics, and even the patrol supervisor for the day.

It is our hope that in doing so will allow us to not only understand what happened but how their training allowed them to succeed in an almost unwinnable situation, and how their lessons learned from this event inform their future training and tactics.

In this first part, we will look at the timeline of the event itself.

In part two, we will sit down on video to look back at the events and formally discuss lessons learned.

In keeping with the standard policy, Yhe Debrief we will not be mentioning the suspect's names or objectives in the hope that they will be lost to the sands of time. We will, however be mentioning the names of the responding officers as they are heroes, and need to be remembered as such.

One additional note:

This episode has a corresponding decision-making exercise created by the California Association of Tactical Officers. Please be sure to run that exercise with your friends or team, and do let us know how you enjoy the DMEs.

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

The city of Saanich, British Columbia is a municipality with a population of just over 115,000 people. It is located on the southern end of Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada, and as part of the Greater Victoria region, adjoining the city of Victoria the provincial capital of British Columbia.

Saanich has a crime rate about half of the average in British Columbia. Simply put, Saanich is a safe city. But on June 28th 2022 two suspects set out to change that by covering their bodies in armor and taking a collection of weapons and explosives to the  Saanich branch of the Bank of Montreal.

This branch is a small residential bank branch located on the west side of a North South running street called Shelburne Street.

The bank's main door is off of its long narrow parking lot, located to the bank South, and emptying out onto Shelbourne and Pear Streets to the south of the lot.

The suspect's intent was to use the bank robbery as a ruse to attract and then ambush local police officers, perhaps in an attempt to recreate the North Hollywood California bank robbery from 1997.

Let’s start off with GVERT team Commander Inspector Mike Brown giving us a little background on the team and telling us how the morning started.

Michael Brown: My name is inspector Michael Brown. I work for the Victoria Police Department. I'm currently the officer in charge of the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team, and I was also the Critical Incident Commander on the Bank of Montreal call from last year.

So GVERT started in 1976/1977. It's always been an integrated team. So what we mean by that is, we have members from regional police departments participating in the same unit. It's the oldest integrated unit in our region. It was stood up obviously, I think we're all familiar with sort of the formation of SWAT in the United States, the impact of the Munich massacre in 1972.

We had I think it was in 1977 there was a UN a United Nations conference that was going to be occurring in BC, it was called the Habitat Conference. So the provincial government funded the creation of two teams in BC. One for the Vancouver area, and one for Victoria.

So our initial team that stood up was eight members and it was four members of the Victoria Police Department and four members of the Saanich Police department. So four Victoria, four Saanich. And that was sort of the birth of our program. And it's slowly grown in size and capability ever since.

For most of our history, we've been a true part-time team where members have their primary police duties and then their ERT Duties are sort of secondary. They're on call. We've been fortunate to slowly improve that over the years. So in 2005/2006, we created a full-time team leader position in the Tactical Unit which I was fortunate to be a part of.

And last year, we funded a second full-time position which is the two IC's job, so those are now occupied by Dylan and Kyle, and we are working hard to create a new deployment model that is just more more modern, and more conducive to the pace that the team operates at which is it's a busy team.

Jon Becker: Give me a sense of how many Ops you do? Give me a team structure?

Michael Brown: So team structure. So we have again full-time team leader, full-time two IC, we have a cadre of assaulters, and then we have a sniper cadre as well; that's the Tactical Unit.

The other components of ERT would be our Crisis Negotiation Team, and then we have a cadre of Critical Incident Commanders. The CIC’s we paired down a lot. This region used to have upwards of 13 or 14 commanders, just too many. So we've paired that down now we are sitting as a cadre of five.

In terms of the pace that the team operates at, I think last year in 2022 the total operational pace was 122. A wide variety of calls, everything from: shadowing surveillance to barricaded suspect resolution, HRT.

We're a busy team. And as I mentioned earlier, we were a fully capable EFE Hostage Rescue Team.

Yeah it was a beautiful summer day. We had an early start on June 28th. ERT was going to be used for shadow surveillance on a drug file. And we met at the Saanich Police Department. I think the briefing happened at 0600. And the team looked great dressed and ready to go. It was a smooth briefing.

Our role that day for the drug file was really just shadow surveillance, and in the event a tactical intervention was required that we were close at hand. So after the briefing, the members deployed and went out to shadow surveillance. I actually.

I guess you never underestimate what can happen on any given day, but certainly at that time in the morning that operation was pretty lowkey. So in order to avoid distraction which can happen at work, I thought “You know what, I'll go to my residence which is really close to the Saanich Police Department. No one's home. I've got this nice big kitchen island, and I'll set up all of my equipment there.”

So I went home, and had my laptop up, and had my Tac radio at the center. And then on the other side had one surveillance radio on the left and another surveillance radio on the right, because there were actually two surveillance teams out for that op.

So I made myself a pot of tea, and sat down at my island and just started doing some other work and I just monitored the surveillance channel.

Surveillance got going. A couple hours later they got on target pretty quick, and they started conducting surveillance on the drug file targets.

So it was a good morning, it was really low-key, everyone was relaxed and then at about 11 o’clock I got a text to my cell phone. And it was odd because the the texter was the acting chief of Victoria PD, and the text was very basic. It just said, “Go to the SPD main Channel” which is the Saanich main frequency.

I was kind of taking it back a little bit. I thought it was kind of an odd text but I turned my radio to the Saanich Channel, and listened for about 30 seconds, and it soon became apparent that there was what sounded like a bank takeover robbery in the Saanich’s area.

I listened to the radio for a few more seconds. I was able to gather a few key pieces of information just on those initial injects that I got over the radio. It sounded like it was a bank takeover robbery that there were multiple suspects, multiple hostages and that there were long guns involved.

I messaged John Musico who was the tactical team leader, and who was leading the shadow surveillance job that we were on. I messaged John and told him to get on the SPD main. He did that, and then I continued to listen obviously to the radio and it sounded like a legit call. I messaged John again, and told him to break off the surveillance job and to head straight to the bank.

Jon Becker: The patrol supervisor for Saanich PD on June 28th is a 25-year veteran named Sergeant Mike Bainbridge.

Mike Bainbridge: My day on the 28th was pretty routine. We had our morning briefing, grabbed some coffee, and I had a 9 o'clock court appearance downtown. I had my partner with the other supervisor cover my zones, and I headed down to court, and had a brief court appearance and then started making my way back towards Saanich here.

As I recall, it was just before 11:00 in the morning is when the alert tone went off, so the 911 calls came in. So I was just driving Northbound up Douglas Street just past the Mayfair shopping center.

I was talking to my wife on the speakerphone just having to leisurely drive back. I was going to come back and have some breakfast, and the alert tone went off on the radio. Dispatcher calls a weapons call in the parking lot of the Bank of Montreal in Shelburne Street that there's a single caller reporting that there's two males putting on masks, and they have long guns in the parking lot of the bank.

Not your usual call on a morning, but start directing resources to go there. So I come over the radio and announce that I've copied the call. I start heading that way myself and start directing people to go in, and what approach to take, and what our goals and objectives are.

It was kind of weird that there was only one call at this time or one call that we were aware of over the radio. So going through the back of your mind you're wondering what's going on, is this a hoax, is this real, is this in an area that somebody can't see, is this a robbery, is something else going on? We really don't know.

It's an odd parking lot for this bank; it's an older building. It is on a busy street that leads north and South from Victoria to Saanich. So, into the downtown area up towards the university, but it's surrounded by tall shrubs around. It's kind of a sunken parking lot off the street. So the visibility is not good, and you can't see into the bank itself from the street.

The first officer that arrived just noted that it seemed to be business as usual. He couldn't see into the bank itself, but he says there didn't appear to be anything untoward at that time.

The second officer arrived on a different street and saw it from a different angle, and he could see right through the ATM vestibule into the bank lobby itself, and he advised that no he could see two people inside with masks with guns and people with their hands in the air.

At that point it got real. Here's a robbery in progress. So bank robberies don't happen every day anymore. Banks don't typically have that much money. We start directing more people into the area, and start relying on the people on the ground for containment points, traffic control points and whatnot, taking advice, but just getting resources into the area.

I did request our Emergency Response Team, that I knew was on duty that day. Dispatch had some trouble locating them initially, they were assigned to another operation and our dispatcher wasn't aware that they were working, I don't think. But eventually got the word out the weapons call, here's a bank robbery.

I wanted our officers to deal with this basically by the book, that there's two people inside, they're conducting a bank robbery. That's the information that we think is what's going on at the time. So we're going to allow them to complete the robbery, and exit the bank so that they're away from any hostages before we attempt to make an arrest. So I wanted our officers to be in the area, have containment, and be in a position where they can react but be out of view, so the offenders don't know that we're there.

They stayed inside. With every minute that went by, it got I guess weirder and weirder. Usually, you know you're going to rob a bank, you're going to be in and out quickly.

I've been a police officer. I just clocked over 25 years two weeks before that, and this isn't the way that robberies go down, people go into banks, people go into jewelry stores they quickly do what they're going to do, and they get out quickly.

So this was getting increasingly odd, and you know the hairs in the back of your neck are really starting to stand up if they weren't up before. And again, just starting to control the flow of traffic in another area, get our containment set up, get all of our people and our rest team set up and in a location where they can react, and they can intervene once these people leave.

In my experience I was still expecting them to leave and probably in a hurry, so I was just trying to plan I was looking at the maps trying to figure out where they would go, which direction they would go and what method are they going to leave on foot, are they going to leave in a vehicle, they're going to have multiple vehicles laid down. I was looking at it through that lens. Still expecting these people to leave the bank once they completed their robbery, and get out of there pretty quickly. But again as time went on, the hairs just really started to stand up, this isn't what's happening.

We had quite a few officers we had our traffic officers our patrol element was in. Our arrest team was set just north of the bank, so around the backside of the bank behind a restaurant ready to intervene with all of our different force options. So with our rifles-- with our bean bag shotguns and whatnot once they left the bank. So the plan was is that they were going to leave the bank, we're going to ensure that they were well clear of the property and then we were going to intervene to try to affect that arrest, and not allow them back into the bank. That's the worst case scenario is they go back inside, and this turns into hostage situation.

The ERT Sergeant Musico had already come over the radio to let us know that they were on route. They had a relatively short ETA. And he was looking for direction of where his team should go.

At this point it's still a fairly dynamic situation. We didn't have complete control of the area, and were waiting for them to arrive.

So directed the Emergency Response Team to link up with the arrest team that we had set up on the North side of the bank. And then they were going to set up their own response at that time.

John Musico: My name is John Musico, I was the team leader of the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team on June 28th, 2022. And my role that day as the team leader was the driver of the ERT vehicle.

This is just like a normal day to us, in terms of we had an objective that day, we're going to arrest in relation to a drug investigation. Secondary objective was to, serve a search warrant on the residence. But we're shadowing a surveillance unit. I have my command structure, so I have my Critical Incident Commander.

Just to paint a bit of a picture: I'm sitting in a vehicle, it's loaded with a bunch of tac guys in the back and on my lap I have multiple radios, cell phones, so that I can communicate with all the investigators, surveillance and my Critical Incident Commander.

I'm working through the day we're shadowing, we're waiting for know safest opportunity to make an arrest and I get a text message on my personal. I look down and it's Mike Brown, my Critical Incident Commander. And it's just a quick blurb which is “Switch over to the Saanich main”.

So in Victoria we have multiple police departments that we work for we're an integrated unit. The Saanich police department have their own radio channel, so I take my portable switch it over to the radio to their channel. And I can hear right away there's a pretty significant incident going on they're describing it as a bank robbery, multiple suspects and I'm listening to it and that they're armed.

I start talking to the guys in the back of the van, the other operators there. I'm like “Everybody get over to the Saanich main”, and then I make a quick decision that we're going to abort the operation that we're on. And we're going to do a mission transition from what our primary objectives was or were on the drug investigation to now responding to this armed problem.

By the grace of God. We're in the van we're kitted up in and we're actually in close proximity like the CRD or Capital Regional District of Victoria is not that big and I'm in the downtown core and the bank in Saanich is maybe a handful of minutes of a driveway. So we start to Pivot and start driving straight to the van or to the bank I should say.

I remember heading down the road on the approach I hadn't been to this bank before so I was asking a couple of guys who had been there just to paint a bit of a picture, get me in there.

Now we're on the approach to the bank and I'm hearing all these updates. And the Cadence and the intensity and the information that's coming through is just escalating. So we have multiple gunmen, they appear to be wearing body armor, they have long guns and they have a couple dozen hostages in the bank. So I'm like this is legit.

So in my mind okay quick call classification this is a hostage taking. And you know we teach and we preach how do we define a hostage is anybody held against their will regardless of location or circumstance ticks that box. We got two dozen people in the bank. We got our government. And we're going to move in and start to plan to do and solve this hostage taking.

So as I approach the bank I can hear the Patrol NCO had established like covert containment of the bank and I'm asking that Patrol NCO, “Where do you want us? You have better situational awareness than I do and I'm going to need some help on that and make no doubt about it.” There's a lot of things going on at that time.

So as we're approaching I don't get a response as quickly as I needed it and I decide to do a little bit of a driveby of the bank for the guys in the back of the van just to be able to see the bank do a bit of a wrecky. Have an understanding where like our points of entry are going to be that in the event that we need to go in. I understand where the points of entry are and what our method of entry is going to be so how are we going to get. And then what are we going to do when we get in there.

While I do a slow driveby of the bank they're still relatively like a normal day out there. They're trying to do their best in terms of keep it covert and you know start to clear out some of the civilians and citizens that are surrounding the bank in the area. But as I pull through the patrol NCO kind of responds and says, “No like listen we want you guys back at the adjacent street on the south side of the bank”. So I'm like “Okay no problem”.

So I'd PL into a parking lot just on the North side or on the side of the bank, and that's where one of the arrest teams of the patrol members were staged.

So I pulled around and I dropped my window down. It was important for me to communicate our presence because I'm in an unmarked van.

So I'm talking to the arrest team and I'm like “Hey, it's JJ from ERT”. It takes a little bit for them to kind of make eye contact with me, and for them to recognize and I say like “Listen, if they come out we'll take them like this is our show from here. You guys help supplement, and we'll figure this thing out.”

I quickly start going through my mindset, “What are we going to do? How are we going to do this thing we got a hostage taking going on here?” Unfortunately that thought process was interrupted with the next call which is “Hey heads up they're coming out”.

Jon Becker: In the back of the van that John is driving there are six additional team members. They are arranged in the back as follows: In the top right corner next to the passenger side cargo door is Damian Palooo. He will be first out of the right side door.

Behind him along the divider at the top of the van is Steven Rykard who will follow Damian out the door number two.

To Damian's right is Mike Yaros, one of the team Medics who is next to the door preparing to open it and deploy a flashbang.

To Mike's left is Colby McIntyre who is stacked up with Steve and will be the third operator at the right side cargo door.

Travis Allnut and Ben King are on the right and left sides of the back of the van respectively, and planning to exit the rear doors to establish an ‘L’ on the suspect.

Here is Damian Poloo.

Damian Poloo: We managed to do a drive by the bank just before rolling in. I was familiar with that bank in that area, so going in I had a good picture of the layout of the ground exits parking lot.

So doing a drive by and a covert van just gave us or gave me specifically just an opportunity to get a good clear look of you know where vehicles were what it looked like the entrance etc. We drove by and it was quiet. There's no one in the parking lot, the parking lot was full of vehicles that couldn't see into the bank. What stood out was the front door was all glass, the vestibule area was all glass, the east side of the building was all glass, the north side of the building was all glass.

So immediately we're at a disadvantage. These guys have eyes from inside. We were updated that had a long gun, or two long guns and we couldn't see in the reflection. The sun etc. We couldn't see into the bank but we knew being inside they could see out. So it wasn't good.

We staged at a location really close by where patrol had set up an rest team with all their layered force options and we were just trying to communicate with them let them know “Hey, we're with you” and that basically once we got the update that these two were coming out of the bank, we would intervene.

Treating it like a hostage rescue any window of opportunity that we could exploit to separate and stop those two from getting back having control of the hostages at any point we would jump in and intervene.

I was set up in the van. It's a tall van, so I'm standing. Most of us are standing and I'm holding on to a handle just inside the door at the B-pillar and all of a sudden we're racing in. If anyone's done any work in a vehicle like that, that's probably the scariest time in swat is sitting in the back of a van while you're racing after targets or catching up or something. And you're just praying to God that there's no crash or something, but yeah we're rolling in hot.

The most surreal thing happens to me where I've never experienced this before but we're driving down the street, and just before turning into the parking lot time just slowed down. I could see the two guys walking out of the bank, their backs were to us. One was about 10 ft in front of the other and they had this very eerie swagger to them. And they were carrying their long guns at a low carry to their side and down.

But what I figured after the fact is the weight of all that body armor that they've covered themselves with was just weighted down to the point where they had this weight bearing walk to them where they were swaggering, and it was just very eerie to me. But time just slowed down where I had this look and I was just like “Holy shit, this is happening”.

Door opens, the noise flashes, the distraction device goes out, and it's a perfect toss. We're coming to a stop and standing holding your long gun, mine's at a low carry. I'm right-handed. So I've got it in my right hand I'm holding on to the handle of the vehicle with my left hand, and coming in hot trying to stop, and hold on and and maintain your footing while at the same time one of the targets (the guy at the back head snaps back) and looks at essentially what was his target.

Their goal was to shoot police, draw police in and shoot and kill as many police. So his head turns and snaps around, and he sees a van full of SWAT and he's switched on. He's goal orientated and knows what he's there to do.

He wasn't phased by the DD at all but in split seconds of his head snapping back, he's starting to swing his muzzle round toward us. And again for me time just slowed right down where I even remember thinking like “Holy shit, we're about to shoot each other”.

Without even thinking about what I was doing, you just fall back on training. I'm up on target. I don't even remember clicking off safety. I don't even remember putting my finger in the trigger guard. I don't even remember looking through the sights. It was so close in proximity that I probably didn't look through the site at all and I'm firing at him. Yeah it just happens so fast.

I obviously get hit in my left femur, and I'm down on the ground. I didn't even get a chance to step out of the vehicle as tactics would dictate. I got hit. I fall back into the van and my eyes are closed. I can't even for the life of me open my eyes. All I know is I'm in a gunfight, and I need to get back into it and help my guys and stop these two others.

Jon Becker: Next to Damian is Steven Rykard who will be following Damian at the right cargo door.

Steven Rykard: As we drive into the lot I have Damian on my left side and I'm standing on his right essentially shoulder-to-shoulder. We're both on rifle. The passenger door is pulled open by Mike, he throws a flashbang, and I see him throw that flashbang with a ton of intention. The way that he threw that just got my head switched into the game and I was ready to be able to step out and challenge these guys.

That sliding door comes open, Mike throws the flashbang, and all of a sudden I just feel this massive blow to my left leg, and my whole body also shakes with this loud percussion almost simultaneous to that flashbang going off.

At first, I wasn't able to comprehend what that was but with that blow to my left leg it prompted me to look down. I looked down to my left leg and around that same time as I'm looking down I see my right leg go. I see something effectively hit my right leg. I see the pants blow open, and before I know what I'm on my back.

It was at that point that I realized that we were taking fire and we are continuing to take fire. You can hear rounds kicking off from all around us. The big thing in that moment was feeling the percussion of these rounds either from rifle rounds or from pistol but I could feel them shake my body with each like detonation.

In that moment I look over to my left and I see Damian. Damian has been knocked down as well. We're both in the back floor of the van on our back kind of laid out over our equipment. I look over, and through the blood that's all over the both of us I look into his eyes and that was probably the one of the most challenging things for me was just not seeing anything there from him. He was essentially looking through me just that thousand yard stare. And all I could hear from him was just an exhale of breath. In my experience just dealing with other incidents and as a police officer, I believed that was his final breath.

I knew we were still in it and that was the only thing that I could hear in my head was thinking like “it's on”. In my mind, I was ready to go. My mindset was there. We've done a lot of training up to that point to be able to keep your head in a place to win that fight.

I looked down, and my rifle was still slung and laying down across my chest. I grabbed my rifle, and I pushed myself as hard as I could to get back up on my feet. I essentially stand up and then before, I know it I'm right back onto my back.

That caught me off guard a little bit and I hadn't really prepared myself for the fact that even though I could be mentally ready to fight, I wasn't physically able to fight.

So I found myself back on my back again looking at Damian. At this point, I start calling out to him to try and keep him present and there with me. I tried to bring my vision open a little bit. I had no idea where the other operators were. I didn't know the status of any of my other colleagues. A huge fear of mine was that the suspects were still up fighting, and had the ability to flank or move around the van and I just felt like a sitting duck there.

It was at that time that I saw Mike. He kind of came into my vision and through that open passenger door I could see Mike step out. He steps to his right, taking up that opening of that open door. It was tough to describe, but seeing him standing where I know that I was just standing, and I was just shot, I was scared for him but I saw what he was doing. And he was absolutely target-locked and engaged in putting in some incredible work.

He was on his pistol. I could see him with the pistol up. He's looking you know over the sights, and he's locked on what I believe to be the targets. I can just see him doing everything he can to put the suspects down.

Jon Becker: With all of the other members of his team down, medic Mike Yurosh draws his pistol and begins to engage the suspect from inside the van.

Mike Yurosh: I'm not even able to process what's happening but I perceive Damian and Steve go down, and I'm knocked to the floor of the van.

I reopen the door with my left hand as I'm drawing my pistol out and I'm literally sitting with my ass on the floor of the van, my feet out in front of me and I lean out and I just start returning fire. I'm delivering rounds from the floor of the van that as I'm firing it's ineffective. I'm not able to get the desire that I want from the target.

Immediately after that I experienced a malfunction. So I tap, rack, fix it and I'm back into the fight most likely ‘cause I'm on the floor of a van. I have a bad grip in my hand with the pistol and I'm trying to fight as hard as I can.

I can't recall exactly the next little bit, but I end up expending two magazines of my pistol reloading. My brain is telling me, I need to be in a better position but I also need to like block for my buddies.

I end up getting out of the van and that's when my perception comes back to me, where I have like this incredible memory of a perfect sight picture on the closest brother to me. I'm firing at the center of his mask, and I can see the rounds hitting him and his armor but nothing happening, and then very quickly I'm like “Oh yes body armor”.

The way that he was and the way I was, I didn't have access to a head shot because he was kind of almost in front of the van at this point. He was now on his hands, his knees crawling toward his brother's rifle which was perfectly propped up on a bipod maybe 3 ft in front of him. This guy is still fighting, he's still a threat, and he's working for his brother's firearm.

Our engagement when we initially engaged that suspect could not have been more than like 15-20 feet. I just remember now working down his body until I found a gap in his body armor and his hips, and I'm delivering rounds in his hips.

And now at this point this is where you see that famous video of sandwich members running down Shelbourne street wrapping the corner of the bank and engaging. This is when Cam, that detached sniper element and the other Patrol element on Pear Street start engaging, and they're able to deliver effective rounds and head shots to eventually put these suspects down.

Jon Becker: The detached element that Mike is talking about is a three-man sniper team composed of team leader Scott Hurston, Cam Steven and Rob Woods. They are in a separate vehicle and have arrived on scene 100ft to the south of where the van is located.

To clarify: The bank is on the west side of a north south street called Shelburne Street. The bank's entrance is on the south side of the bank and opens onto the parking lot which is directly below the entrance to the South. This lot is bordered further to the South by Pear Street. The sniper team is located on Pear Street.

Here is Cam Steven.

Cam Steven: So as we're kind of rolling north on Shelbourne street we could see the van in front of us. We see the van stationed and we're essentially waiting for the sequence for the van to roll into law to take these guys. I guess our role at that point would just be to be a cutoff team to the South exit.

Rob does a good job. He stops short of not rolling right into the bank because we don't want to alert these guys ‘cause we're on Mark Suburban but it's a place Suburban.

So Rob stops on Shelburn and Pier I open the door to get out to see where I can help and that point I'm kind of expecting the the sound of the DD going out but then I start hearing rapid gunfire. I remember turning to the guys in the truck is saying say to them that's gunfire.

So as the gunfire is going out I run up to the south exit of the parking lot to the Bank of Montreal. I can see Patrol to my left moving forward to create a Baseline Sally creating the Tactical L with us and the guys in the van. I can see there's already one suspect down, and I can see the second suspect further away from me about 25 yards. He's almost in a crawling low walking position. I can see there's SKS style rifles. I can see one rifle on the ground next to one of the guys, and I can still hear gunfire going out, and that this guy is still fighting through whatever he's fighting through.

I wasn't totally aware of the body armor initially until I could see these guys. I can remember vividly seeing that they had body armor taped to their legs.

So obviously with this person still actually in a gunfight, I started engaging this suspect with my pistol. I remember the rounds going out, and I have pretty much shooting instinctively at this point because it's happening so fast, I'm trying to catch up. The rounds are going out, and I remember thinking myself “Why isn't this working? Why aren't these rounds working? Because he's still moving, he's still pushing forward, he's still going towards the gun so then my sight pitcher gets closer, and I start try to take accurate shots at the guy's head.

At this point the team and the van, I believe are still actively firing as well and patrol next to me as well as Scott Hurston.

After he goes down something just triggers me kind of gets me all that fixation on these guys we called a hold on the line so people stop firing where I was, and then I start hearing yelling from where I believe the back of the van is which is where I mission switched, and I start running to the back of the van to see what's going on.

Jon Becker: It is difficult to convey exactly how complicated the scene behind the white van was.

Six of the seven operators in the van have been shot. John has a gunshot wound to his foot.

Travis has a gunshot wound to his thigh.

Ben has a gunshot wound to his upper leg with an arterial bleed.

Steven has gunshot wounds to both of his now broken legs, and one to his left forearm as well as an arterial bleed.

Colby has been shot through the trapezius muscle, and is bleeding profusely.

And Damian has been shot in the thigh causing an exposed compound fracture of his femur, a massive femoral artery bleed and he has also been shot through the side, which has traversed his abdomen striking numerous organs and he is now struggling to breathe.

To try and convey exactly what was going on with each injured team member, we will break the timeline for a minute and look at the experience of each of them separately. We will start with Colby McIntyre who was the first one Cam Steven encounters.

Here's Cam followed by Colby.

Cam Steven: As I approach the van I can see bullet holes out the back of the van. I'm thinking “Holy shit we took rounds”. As I get to the back of the van and I see a Saanish member in the back of the van already helping with medical and then I see it's Colby he's on his back and he's and the officer, I believe it's Navid Akbar he's trying to pull Colby out of the van. So I help but grab Colby's vest from the shoulders and I start pulling him out and as I pull him out Colby looks at me very calmly says, “Bro I've been shot”.

Knowing Colby I wouldn't expect anything else from him. It was very matter of fact and I was like “Okay buddy I got you where you been shot and he tells me he's been shot in the shoulder”. So we pull Colby out and get him on the ground.

At this point we're wearing all dark blue uniforms and it's very hard to see where the blood's coming from. So we start going through our medical which we called “March” and I'm looking for a mass hemorrhage. So I exposed Colby's vest to lift it up. I think at this point I take his pistol from him ‘cause I think he has his pistol in his hand and I just put it on the ground next to him or behind him. Then I start moving his shirt and then I see he's got a junctional wound into his left shoulder by his clavicle very close to his neck.

Learning point for me is I become fixated on this injury. I should have done an overall scan of his body looking for mass bleeds but based on information I had the time, and Colby said he was only shot once I believe that this was his only injury.

So Navid's with me and I call out that I need sea locks because I know it's a junctional wound and as the Medics keep teaching us if it's junctional, pack it. So Navid I believe he opens up his med poach, and starts providing his medical equipment. So I remove the sea locks and I start packing his wound. And I remember this sea lock is going in very easily. It seems like it's quite the hole in his neck, and I'm thinking this must have been a high caliber round that went through them because the sea locks is just going in like butter.

Colby McIntyre: Right away my hearing went. I didn't have any Ear Pro on. Within seconds Poloo is shot and Rykard's shot and they both fall. I'm kind of taking an athletic stance because I can't stand up fully in the van due to the height of the van so I'm kind of cached and leading to my left side. I'm trying to pull out my pistol, and at that time I'm shot.

So it's like Poloo, Rykard, myself. The bullet went through the left collar strap of my vest into my trap. I remember the force of the bullet kind of pushed me back, and I kind of fell forward onto the bench seat in front of me.

I knew right away that I was shot. I had a sharp pain in my trap and neck. It had this burning sensation, and this kind of warm like wet like I knew I was bleeding. I thought I was shot in the neck. I didn't know how bad I was shot, or what my condition was. I couldn't see it based on where it was on my body but I thought I was shot in the neck.

At that time I lost continuity of that shooter, and I didn't know where he was. So I just right away started to make my way towards the back of the van to get out, and to try to get a position.

I was pulling myself along trying to get out of there, and I thought that he could be on our passenger side. So I was moving back there. I had my pistol in my hand, and then as I looked up moving I could see like a wall of blue, and it was Patrol officers turning the corner and they're just kind of in this baseline formation, and they're just firing. And that lasts a couple seconds and then it's over.

At that time I can tell that the engagement is kind of done. I can hear now, and it's like they're going into like medical. I can hear guys yelling and screaming different things.

I yell, “I'm shot in the neck. I'm shot in the neck.” No one really comes to help me. I think there's just so much going on, and everything's just so scattered, and there's so many guys shot.

So at that time I knew Poloo was shot and Rykard was shot. I had no idea King was shot or Musico was shot.

I started to try to pull myself out of the van. I managed to pull myself out, and landed on the pavement. Cam Stevenson ran into me. I remember I couldn't even see him really and he said, “Colby are you okay?” And I told him like “I'm shot in the neck buddy”. So he starts ripping off my gear, and then he starts packing my wound with some sea locks gauze. I remember the pain of him just going over and over like jamming and stuff into me. He runs out of the sea locks, and then they start to try to put Israeli bandages on my wound.

I remember at one point Sean Juvie, he's a Patrol guy for Victoria with a lot of medical background just like a medic he slid in to to kind of help me. He ripped off his medic pack, and then just as he was doing that there was a female voice and she was just screaming at him, “Stop what you're doing. Stop what you're doing, load him in my ambulance right now.” That's what she said.

So there's a female paramedic with a male par paramedic. They got me on the stretcher, loaded me into the ambulance. She said I appear to be okay, and appear to be stable but her concern is where the bullet is. So the bullet hit my gear and went down into my organs or into my potty or whatever. So that was their main concern as they rushed me to the hospital.

Jon Becker: From Damian Poloo's perspective he is badly injured and lying on the floor of the van. When the gunfight ends, Mike Yarosh and Cam Steven begin to work on Damian.

Here are Mike, followed by Cam and Damian.

Mike Yarosh: Damian is closest to me and I can immediately see in his left leg he's sustained a significant gunshot wound. There is blood pouring out and part of his femur is exposed.

So, I holstered my pistol and the first thing I did was grab the tourniquet that's right off my pistol holster. I slide it onto Damian's leg. I throw the tourniquet onto his leg. I tighten the windless, tighten it once check. Not working. It's still bleeding tighten it again check still bleeding, a third time finally that tourniquet stops Damian's bleed.

Now I start kicking into kind of my medic like that was all automatic. Everything that happened was automatic and I start kicking my brain. I'm like “Okay I need to go through March and I believe that we are in a direct threat environment”.

So for us in our Tactical Combat Casualty care direct threat environment is care under fire where I still think there is a hostile threat. We don't have a lot of intel of kind of what's happening right now. Suspects are down, but I still think that there is a threat so we're just going to deal with massive bleeds and airway.

So I start checking Damian for massive bleeds. I go through his large extremities, his legs, his arms, his arms. I don't find any other gunshot wounds in those areas. I go to assess his airway. Best way is just to look and see if they can talk. I look into Damian's eyes and like it's just a sight I'll never forget. I was looking into the eyes of a man who was dying. He had very quickly gone white. His eyes were kind of rolling around, he was still conscious, he was still breathing on his own. I was “Okay he's got a patent airway for now. I can deal with this.”

In my head just very quickly my assessment is Damian suffered like a catastrophic leg wound. He bled so significantly in such a short period of time that he's already got a skin change. He is a candidate for TXA.

What it does, it prevents the breakdown of blood clots. Research has found to be very effective early on when it's applied to people who experience traumatic and major bleeds in their recovery in the long term, because basically it prevents the body from breaking down clots that have been built. And when you've had a significant injury, you want to keep those clots as long as you can until you're in a higher level of care.

I grabbed the TXA from our medkit, and so I gave him five cc's of TXA in his arm and 5 cc of TXA in his glute.

We do a good job of training that in between each one of our March assessments, we actually take a second to like take a breath, scan, look around. And after I did my M-assessment on or my massive hemorrhage assessment on Damian I was able to scan inside the van.

I have this incredible memory of Steve Rykard lying on the floor of the van. He's putting his own tourniquet on his leg as he's very clearly been shot multiple times.

I can see Colby kind of half in and half out in the back of the van. When I look to the gap in the partition of the front of the van, I see that the windshield is completely full of bullet holes.

I had thought (I knew John was in the front seat) I had thought John was dead. I thought those were rounds that came into the van versus came out. I had a very brief moment of time. I was like John is most likely dead. I have a number of down guys that are still conscious and alive. I'm going to deal like these are my priority but I need to make sure at some point. I'm going to have to look in the front and see what thats like.

Patrol had done an amazing job at this point ‘cause they had now run in, and we had Patrol members assisting us and actually jumping into the van to help with care. So Ashley came up beside me and actually went down beside Steve and started helping him apply his tourniquets. I had Chris come up beside me and Chris and I go to pick up Damian to bring him to the back.

Cam Steven: At this point I hear Mike call out that he's look he's helped Damian and I look to my left and I could see Damian being pulled out. I'm like “There's no way another guy got shot”. There's no way. We're already in it. We don't need to deal with more guys. I go over to start helping Chris Andrews with Damian and I can see that Damian's in pain. My interpretation of it that he's struggling to breathe, he's moaning in pain, he's very white in the face and he's kind of looking around but eyes are also rolling back and like what Mike said too is he thought he was dying and I felt the exact same way. I was like “Oh no my buddy's dying here”.

So Mark’s collection is at his vest is still on, things have been untucked. So I start removing his vest. So after the vest comes off, radio comes off, we lift the shirts now up and I see that there's a bullet hole in his stomach so I call out “I need a chest seal”.

I'm not sure where it came from. It might have been Chris Andre that sacrificed his own IPACs again. So all these Saanich members are giving us the kit we need they're all carrying these IPACs they all carry chest seals, tourniquets and sea locks. There's medical equipment getting thrown at us like they're just like “Here take mine. Take my tourniquet and take what you need.”

Chris Anders pushing direct pressure on the chest wound. I'm struggling with getting the chest seal open and on. It goes on I get Chris roll Damian, and then I can see there's an exit wound on his right side just below his ribs. So the second chest still goes on there.

Damian's essentially a new patient to me. I can see that there was a tourniquet on his leg already which I actually thought was two but one of them's actually his leg strap holster so I thought that was a TK but it wasn't. So as we're starting to expose the demon by cutting his pants off, I can see that there's still blood starting to pump through his leg injury. I'm thinking to myself, “Okay he's been moved as we know for moving patients the tourniquets can get bumped”.

So we pull out another tourniquet, throw the trick on his leg tie as hard as I can. He's yelling at me. Damian could feel this one going on. I'm trying to reassure him like “Buddy I got you. I'm putting a tourniquet on. I'm trying to help you.” It's funny I didn't know I was doing this but Mike tells me afterwards that I was talking out loud what I was doing. I was telling myself “Okay a chest wound, chest seal”, and I'm saying this out loud because it's actually in the recording. So I thought it was kind of funny how I was just during all this stress, I'm telling myself what to do out loud.

So we get the tourniquet on. I believe it stopped the bleeding, and it's not pouring down his leg anymore. We start cutting off clothes. I can see Mike has taking command of the medical, and he's starting to triage guys for priority for the ambulatory.

Damian Poloo: Then the vest comes off, my shirt comes off, and I hear them call for chest seals. And at that moment I knew I'd been hit again and I just thought “I can't believe I've been shot twice”. That was a thought that went a couple mind times in my mind.

I immediately thought of my kids-- not in a fearful way that I was done I was gone but I just thought “Oh man like I've been hit and life's going to look different”.

So the chest seals go on. And they break my chest and back for more injuries. There's an exit wound. So I got shot through the left abdomen. The bullet ripped through my stomach, a bit of my colon, and through the liver and then came out the other side breaking some ribs there.

So two chest seals went on. And for me this seemed to happen in a matter of I don't know not even a minute from the time that I got shot in the van to being escorted out, and all the medical applications done. An ambulance shows up, and I'm being loaded onto the ambulance. It just happened so quickly.

From there I don't remember the ambulance ride at all. I remember getting to the Victor Victoria General Hospital and unloaded from the hospital, and from there it was just lights out.

Mike Yarosh: After I did my M-assessment on or my massive hemorrhage assessment on Damian I was able to scan inside the van. I have this incredible memory of Steve Rykard lying on the floor of the van. He's putting his own tourniquet on his leg as he's very clearly been shot multiple times.

In my head I'm like I still have Steve in the van. So I climbed back into the van and Ashley had done a really good job. Steve had put a tourniquet on one of his legs. I think Ashley had put him helped him put another tourniquet on his legs. I saw a gunshot wound on his right leg lower right leg gunshot wound on his lower left leg, and he also had a gunshot wound I think it was his lower left arm.

So either me or Ashley we threw a third tourniquet onto that just to stop the bleeding and I was like same thing. So that's my massive massive hemorrhage, no other massive Hemorrhage Airway like scan. Steve's very composed and like patent airway conscious he's with me. I was like okay, good airway is good, same thing. I'm going to move him to a position behind the van where we're in indirect care. We got some sort of cover and concealment and we can do more medical work there.

I called two Victoria Police members who were stationed on the border of Saanich in Victoria which was only a handful of blocks down from that bank. So they were on scene almost immediately. I called these two members over, and they helped me pick up Steve. We bring him to the back of the van and lay him down.

Steve Rykard: I quickly reached down and grabbed my tourniquet. I knew that I was bleeding from both legs but from what it felt like it felt like my right leg was bleeding worse. So I grabbed the tourniquet, slid it over my right leg, pulled it up as high and as tight as I could, cinched it down, spun the windless, locked it into place and was now kind of going through my mind as to what was going to happen next.

It was around there I was going to turn over to grab Damian see what I could do to get us out of the van into some position of safety. I just had no idea how long this fight was going to go on and I had no idea what the status was of anybody. I felt pretty in the dark being in the back of the van and not being able to see anything.

Suddenly things go a little quiet and I've got police officers jumping into the back of our ERT van. These were patrol officers that were on seen initially for the robbery call, and all of a sudden they're piling in through the back of the van and I have one of them in particular she jumps up towards me and she starts talking to me. She just starts to engage me telling me “Steven, we're going to be okay everything's going to be all right”. She starts to grab her own tourniquet and gives it to me which we're both able to pull up onto my left leg. And as we're going through this to make some other assessments of my condition I see that I was also shot in my left forearm.

So a third tourniquet wherever that comes from gets put over my arm cinched into place. And then at this point almost everything around us has been transitioned into a medical intervention component.

So I then end up almost closing my eyes and trying to stay with it, and just trying to center myself and focus on what I needed to do. And in that moment there wasn't anything I could do to help anybody else. And I felt like I needed to focus on what I needed to do to keep myself alive keep myself focused on the task at hand which was just ensuring I could get out of there, allowing others to work on me and feel like I was at least in a position where they could help me.

I was pulled from the back of the van by, a couple people on my legs, a couple behind me under the arms to lift me up and extracted out of the van and laid out onto the sidewalk just off of the main street where the bank was. I was then also laid out with everyone else that was injured at the time and laying down. I could feel all my equipment getting cut off, vest comes off, helmet comes off. Clothes start getting cut to expose my legs to expose my arm and to be able to make an assessment on my body to see where else I had taken a round or been injured.

Again, Mike does some amazing work and I can hear him taking over command to indicate that he was in charge of the medical and the triage. He was expressing the importance of each of the injuries and what needed to take place. With my eyes closed, I could just hear the scuffle and shuffle of people around me as everybody was working. Everybody was grabbing their own first aid kits, whatever equipment, they had tourniquets etc, and they were doing what they needed to do to be able to stop the bleeds.

I don't know how long I was on the ground for before I was then picked up, and I could hear people making plans to put me in the back of a police vehicle. And that's when they loaded me into the back of a police vehicle, they pulled me in through the rear prisoner compartment and closed the doors. I had the three tourniquets on me and they were ready to go. They weren't in a position to wait for an ambulance one because we didn't know the timings of an ambulance, and two because of the potential risks of an ambulance showing up to the scene at that time.

So I was in the back of a police vehicle and then it was lights and sirens and as fast as they could safely to get me to the hospital.

Jon Becker: In addition to the three members who intended to exit the right side passenger door being shot, there are also two members Travis Allnut and Ben King who were intending to exit the rear and have now been shot.

Here's Travis Allnut, followed by a member of the detached sniper element Rob Woods who helped treat Travis, and then Ben King.

Travis Allnut: So as we were rolling I remember John saying something that indicated to me that we were about to be kind of on top of these guys and the side door. So we opened the back door, and just kind of as we're opening that back door just gunshot started going.

For me I initially felt some in my leg and I just remember thinking I just got shot. I continue out the back door, and that's when I see Ben is already on the ground and he's been shot in his leg.

He's kind of propped up sitting against the back bumper. What I see is just his right leg, he's wearing blue pants and I just see blood. I see a large pool of blood underneath him. So I know that it's coming from his right leg I can tell that but I can't really tell where. So I immediately grab my tourniquet and start to apply that to his right leg.

I think sort of where my head was at the time. I'm not really thinking at this time-- I'm just kind of doing. I think in my brain I don't know that anybody else has been hit. So I just understand that those guys are dealing with the problem, and then Ben and I are dealing with this problem.

I apply a tourniquet to his right leg, and he's in quite a bit of pain. I just see a lot of blood but I don't really know exactly where the injury is. So once that tourniquet is applied, I cut his pants, so that I can expose what it is to make sure that I've got the tourniquet high enough, and that it's not actual junctional or above the tourniquet and still bleeding.

When I do that it exposes this large injury kind of in his quad area. It's open and kind of bubbling almost-- not bubbling but sort of just I'm not sure if I've completely stopped the bleeding. I think he expresses that he's not sure either.

So at this time I was joined by another guy, Rob Woods. So Rob had a tourniquet, and we decided to put another tourniquet just below mine. There was a little bit of space below just below to help stop that bleeding.

Sort of while this is happening I'm looking around and starting to understand kind of the gravity of this.

All of this is happening in a matter of I don't even know like probably in like a minute where everybody's now out of the van and I'm starting to understand the sort of the gravity of this situation.

I sort of look around and everybody that I can see is being tended to. We got the bleeding stopped on Ben, and then I asked Rob to cut my pants. I couldn't really see anything. I didn't know how significant my injury was. I was ambulatory. I was able to move it. I didn't think it was overly significant, but just to sort of make sure I guess.

Rob Woods: My name is Rob Woods and I've been on the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team since 2020.

I remember running towards the van and I just remember seeing all of the bullet holes in the windshield, and I was taken aback. I thought John was gone there. I remember thinking, there's no way anybody could have survived the amount of the barrage of bullets that have come through that windshield. And then I saw him standing by the driver's side door. I asked him if he was okay kind of in disbelief that he was still there.

He turned around and he just said, “Go help Ben”.

That's the first time I saw Ben at the back of the van and he was sitting with his back against the bumper on the driver's side, his legs were straight out, his gun was in his hand and it was on the ground and he wasn't moving.

I ran back there to see if Ben was okay and I could see that Travis was working on him and putting a tourniquet on his leg or had put a tourniquet on his leg. I grabbed Ben's gun, I secured it and I put his pistol into my pocket in the right cargo pocket of my pants. As I was getting Ben's gun into my pants pocket Travis was saying he needed a second tourniquet for Ben. So I grabbed the one that was on my holster, and I gave it to Travis so he could put it back and give it back to Ben.

Travis is one of our attack Medics and and he has much more medical training than I do so I wanted to do what I could to support him.

Once that second tourniquet was put on Ben Travis stood up and he kind of I remember him wincing and almost kind of stumbling when he put weight on his leg and I asked him, “Are you shot?” I think he said, “I don't know”. I started to do checks like wet checks on his legs, and I came across some holes just above his knee on the right side.

I remember asking like “Are you shot?” I don't know. I ripped his pants open and I remember seeing his wound, and you could tell he was shot but it was through and through just on the outside of his leg just above his knee.

Almost at the same time Shawn Juvie slid on his knees with his medical bag. Shawn is also a medic and former paramedic, so I know that his medical training again is far superior than mine. I know that these two guys are going to give Ben the best care that is available to him at this time. I know that I'm not going to be able to do any more than I can with what I can, with what my training is and I know these guys are going to do a much better job.

So that's really the first time that I turned around and kind of noticed the chaos. I remember hearing screaming and I remember yelling for scissors. I remember hearing people yelling for tourniquets and scissors and other medical kit. I never looked back to actually see what was happening.

There was a ton of people assisting and patrol members working with all of these guys and they're all extremely competent and working really well together, and integrating themselves really well with us. It was really comforting to see that that happening and and everybody's calm. It just sort of felt like everything was going to be all right.

So my sort of only suggestion Mike likes to say that I yelled at him was can we start doing some of our own transports. We were still waiting on EHS at this point, and we were kind of getting to a place where we had people packaged that they could be transported to hospital. So I make that suggestion and then we start pulling up patrol vehicles to assist with transport.

It's actually a really I don't know an interesting memory that I have and a really cool memory is just recognizing that we needed to load up Steve and as I looked over there's inspector Underwood with the Saanich Police is sort of picking him up and getting ready to do a carry. I just remember thinking “Where did you come from?” He was there and I just sort of asked him “You good for that?” He said, “Yep he picked him up”. We took Steven over to the waiting police vehicle and then like almost immediately we once we had Steven loaded we went back and I picked Ben up and loaded him into a second police vehicle.

Ben King: My name is Ben King I'm a member of the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team. I was an assaulter on June 28th 2022 in the back of our covert van. I looked up directly across from me and I saw him spin around with a SKS rifle and pointed at the van.

The next thing I knew I had a bullet hole in my right leg the upper right thigh on the outside. It went through my leg under my femur and blew out the inner half of my quad. That's where my consciousness snapped and I realized I had been shot.

I got out of the back of the van with another member, got behind the wheel well and started to shoot back at the feet. And after that, I looked up and I was laid out on the ground. I had a major bleed in my right leg. And then I realized that the suspects were both down. I looked up on my boss and I confirmed that they were both down and we transitioned to a medical scenario.

I looked around and realized several other members of our team had been shot so I started to use self- Aid. I was fortunate enough to have another tac medic right next to me who began working on my right leg. He cut my pants off and applied two cat tourniquets to stop the bleed.

What I realized was that there were two other members of our team that were very badly shot. I recognized that there was no way that the paramedics were going to come in to get me. I spoke with a Patrol member, and basically yelled at them to pick me up, put me in the back of a patrol vehicle which she did. And after I was stuffed in the back she rode with me right to the hospital and after that I was right into surgery.

Jon Becker: The final perspective of the van is that of team leader John Musico who is driving the van and is separated from the rest of the team by a metal partition.

Here is John Musico.

John Musico: As I'm approaching it, I can see them exiting the bank and I've got their backs to us. I'm like this is good this is what I want I want a little bit of kind of concealment. I don't want them be looking at us when we do this take down. I've got their backs and I've got a window and I'm taking it now.

In the back of the van I prepped these guys we're doing a take down to prepare yourself for hard contact we're going to be in very close proximity and we roll in.

I'm watching their body language, their arms are at their sides, their heads are kind of down as if they're almost a little bit in conversation with one another, and not really looking around.

It was interesting to see because they're wearing just so much gear, so they have head to toe body armor on. They've got you know plates in their carriers, they've got Kevlar wrapped all around them, so they're very bulky when I'm staring at them. I got their back and we initiated that takedown.

Well this is why training is so important is that when we launch that takedown, we are now in a life and death scenario. My life's in danger. I'm staring down the barrel of SKS rifles. All that I have between me and them is a plain of glass, and about 10 ft.

I see we deploy flashbang on the exit to buy some time for the guys to get out of the vehicle. It goes off. It affects the mindset of one of the two suspects. The second one ends up spinning quite quickly on us and that's the one on the right for me. So I'm staring at their two backs. I got one on the left and I got one on the right and the guy on the right ends up turning quickly. And as he's turning his SKF rifle is coming up and I see him crack off the first round. It's clear as day in my mind where I can see that casing still spinning out of that gun.

I don't recall getting the vehicle into park. I don't recall getting my pistol out. All I recall is getting that gun up and on him as fast as I possibly can.

I've got my pistol up and I remember starting to work through this problem which is I'm staring down the barrel of these two assault rifles that are going off in front of me. I cracked the first round. Well that takes my ears away and I can't hear anything now 'cause my ears are ringing like crazy 'cause I'm sitting in the front cab of this vehicle, and I'm firing my pistol my ears are just ringing like crazy.

I remember just working through that and I'm staring at the slide of my pistol and I'm delivering rounds and they're not achieving what I want which is to stop these guys from trying to kill us. I felt this minute little bit of anger in a sense of my gun wasn't working fast enough. I'm having this thought process of, “Can I physically push my slide to make it work faster?”

I'm tracking you know the one suspect on the right and then I see the mindset catch back up on the guy on the left. I'm having to transition between the guy on the right, and the guy on the left in hopes of just delivering effective rounds to stop what's happening, which is, they're trying to kill us.

I'm able to get to a point where some of the rounds are achieving what I'm looking for, which is to stop them.

Keep in mind, there’s a lot going on all this time. I'm working through one malfunction. I've run dry, so I have a mag change to do up front in the vehicle on my own.

I get to a point where I've interpreted that the threat has been mitigated, or it's lessened to a certain degree, and that's when I decide to get out of the vehicle to move to another piece of cover 'cause I've been there for a little bit, and I just don't feel like starting to take any more rounds. It's when I exit the vehicle that I'm also shot. The day is interesting for me because of the setup of the van that has the partition between the front and the back.

I have no idea what's transpired behind me. All I know is what's happened in front of me, which is I've just been in a massive shootout with two armed suspects with SKS rifles.

I've been hit and I push over to a piece of cover and I make a quick assessment. Is this something that I need to deal with now in terms of the severity of my injury or can I deal with it later? I made a decision, I'm going to deal with this thing later.

I was lucky the doctors still can't really figure it out. It's a through and through shot through my foot but it doesn't hit a single bone or a single tendon-- it's bizarre. They can't figure it out. This thing's tumbling. I have shrapnel all through my foot. I have significant nerve damage. I've lost the feeling of my foot but not a single bone which is crazy. I am very lucky to be alive, and I'm very lucky to have suffered very minor injuries as well.

I'm out of the van. I make a quick assessment that I'm going to deal with this injury later. We're into a bit of an engagement again in the parking lot with one of the suspects but that allowed me to then start to really work through the remainder, and the addition of like new problems. I've got two suspects down in the parking lot. I still haven't in what I'm interpreting achieved my primary objective which is I need to get into that bank and save those hostages. There was some communication that there was potentially a third suspect in play, and that really just threw my brain for a bit of a loop.

I didn't know where we were safe. I didn't know what I had contained, what I hadn't. I didn't know if another shooter was waiting in an ambushed position to start taking more police officers and civilians out. So that threw a little bit of a wrench into you know how I was going to systematically solve the problems that are in front of me.

Fortunately, we had the support of all the patrol members on the ground and that's everybody's like literally running into this gunfight. That's when I start kind of delegating roles and responsibilities to the other members who are now showing up, where I have one of the Victoria Police Sergeant on my right, I'm like “Listen you got to deal with these two suspects that are down a lot.” I want you to start formulating a plan on how you're going to safely take them into custody”.

As I'm having that conversation I turn around and I look behind the van and I can just see a sea of people. Well, I walk around to see the severity of the injuries of the members that are there. I got multiple members down. They're all bleeding out in front of me. And each member is like a pod of police officers. They were all engaged in like life-saving first aid. So tourniquets are out. They have Israeli bandages, chest seals are all out and they're all these three guys who are suffering you know significant injuries are all being worked on right in front of me.

It all starts crashing down on me a little bit in terms of what has just actually transpired.

It's funny you know how your mind goes and I walked over, and the first person I see is Steven Rykard. He has some catastrophic injuries to his legs. I lean down, he's got three members working on him. Our main medic who was also in the van, who's the only guy that doesn't get shot, is there working on everybody and that's That's Mike Yorosh. So Mike Yorosh is there. He's our medic, and he is taking full command of this catastrophic scene which is just unbelievable to see people work that way.

I lean down and I talk to Steven, I'm like “How you doing buddy?” He's got a smile on his face. He just gives me this kind of raise his hands above his shoulders. He's like “Having a bit of a day”. Well three people are working on saving his life while he's bleeding out through his legs, and he's smiling, and I'm just like “Oh my goodness”.

At that stage is when all of our supports showing up in terms of we're doing kind of a 50-50 split of like medevacs through like police vehicles, and through ambulances now that we have the scene a little bit more contained.

We're launching like entries into the bank. The arrest and taking the two suspects into custody is taking place, and then we have that full medical scene going on at the same time.

Then eventually, I remember some one of the medics end up grabbing me and he's like “Listen man we got to look at your foot”. I'm like “We can deal with it later”. And he's like “We're going to look at your foot right now”.

I remember him taking my boot off and it had gone in through one side like kind of underneath my big toe, took the brunt of it for sure, and then it tumbled all through the ball of my foot and came out by the baby toe. But it had partially come through the skin. So the projectile was still kind of half lodged into my foot.

I remember when I pulled my boot off, and he cut the sock off. I can't see this like any of the injury 'cause it's all on the ball of my foot and I can't get below my foot to see this thing. I remember just looking at his eyes and his eyes are massive and he's like “Oh man  you got to go to the hospital”. I'm like “I'll go to the hospital later”. He's like “You're going now man”.

My time at the scene is really wrapped up in a handful of minutes. One of the unique circumstances of the day is that it's a bit of a dead zone in terms of like cell traffic, or communication like you just can't get on your phone out there and you can't get on the police radio. It's just the dead zone.

I'm trying to get in touch with our Critical Incident Commander Mike Brown. I can't get him on the radio and I remember I end up getting another text from him like “What's going on?” I'm like “We got guys down”. He's like “How bad is it?” Then my last text back to him is bad and then I'm like “I'm heading up in the ambulance, and heading up the hospital”.

Jon Becker: At a command level Mike Brown, Drew Robertson and the instant command team are trying to handle several priorities. There are six injured team members, an unknown number of hostages in the bank, two deceased suspects, a vehicle that has not been cleared, and a potential third suspect all taking place simultaneously.

Here's Mike Brown discussing the aftermath of the shooting.

Mike Brown: So you know as the commander you're having all these thoughts go through your mind in short order. And just trying to almost triage what you can deal with at the time, but realizing that you have sort of immediate short and longer term issues to deal with.

As I mentioned, John was the team leader that day and even though I was messaging John so I was comfortable John was overall okay, John had actually been shot and even though it wasn't life-threatening it was still a significant injury and he had to go off to the hospital for repairs.

So all of a sudden I have multiple members shot, my team leader’s off to the hospital. My two IC is out of town.

So enter Scott Hurston. So Scott is our sniper team leader, very-very special person, very skilled, cerebral calm so but not normally in his purview to run, which at that time I don't want to say it was an assault or base call but certainly he was right on the ground right in the middle of this thing. And as you said, we still had hostages in the bank. We had rooms in the bank that we didn't own. There were at least two rooms on the upper level of the bank that were locked and were uncleared.

We had the trunk and this car that we had to deal with in the parking lot which we believe was associated to the suspects. And as you mentioned, there was a spectre of this third person, and also information floating around that was kind of coming in and out of the CP about the involvement of a white van.

So there's just as you said there's a lot of ‘balls in the air’ at that point. So it was triage and I wanted to create stability at the HRT first.

So Scott and I worked together to accomplish that. I can't say enough about Scott's performance in that regard. He was calm, measured, cerebral and really did a good job controlling the ground.

Scott Hurston: My name is Scott Hurston. I'm a sergeant with the Victoria Police Department and the sniper team leader for the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team.

As it happens obviously the members in the white van begin to engage the secondary vehicle. The three of us coupled with a number of patrol resources begin engaging from the south.

So we've essentially have a tactical L on these two suspects. And after what seems like an attorney, but from what I understand only a handful of seconds, the two suspects are stopped.

So as that's happening we have some members who were with me in the south they run over and begin to assist the incident that's taking place behind the white van which I later find out as a number of my teammates and other officers are shot.

As that's happening our Critical Incident Commander Mike Brown, comes over the radio and essentially asks me specifically, if memory serves to take the two suspects into custody. So I'm standing there with a couple of patrolmen that I recognize.

I don't have a long gun with me at this time, so I took hold of a long gun from a patrol officer. I assign various roles and responsibilities as to how we are going to take these two suspects into custody.

I take an intentional deep breath myself and I can see out of the corner of my eye that other guys are taking this deep breath too. We had all just been in what I think is our first engagement and now we're going to advance on these two guys to take them into custody safely.

I had already run to the corner and I could see to the north where the white van was that there's a beehive of activity taking place that obviously members had been shot. Members were doing various Medical Aid to one another, and I knew that obviously these two individuals needed to be taken into custody so we could ensure a safe scene.

So that's ultimately what ended up happening.

A number of Patrol officers and myself advanced on the two suspects, and took them into custody, placed them in handcuffs, and again you could obviously tell that they were deceased.

Then from there I went to the back of the van and that's when the entire tragedy really became very apparent to me. I could see a number of my teammates were leaning up against the van. They're writhing in pain.

The entire ground was covered in black red blood. I was literally having to step through it as my teammates were being treated by other operators on the team, and even Patrol who was doing an exceptional job ensuring the various tourniquets and other Medical Aid was being handled.

From there I walked to the back of the van and I could see my team leader Sergeant John Musico who was limping, and I asked him what had happened and he suggested that he thought he had been shot. We obviously agreed that he needed to get himself to the hospital relatively quickly, and that's ultimately what happened.

We had a brief conversation, and he had told me that he had sent a number of patrolmen into the bank to help assess the status of the hostages. I told them that I would continue to make sure that the hostages are well cared for and looked after, and I had the ground. And that I would ensure that the appropriate resources and the appropriate things were done. From there, I think he ended up just going directly to the hospital and I assumed command, and control of the ground for the next 2 and a half 2 hours 45 minutes.

Our team has an operational philosophy that we refer to as PIEHT which is simply an acronym essentially stands for our safety priorities, our intelligence, the environment at hand tactics and training of the members as well as officer instincts.

So as far as our safety priorities would dictate ensuring that the hostages and the victims our safe is of greater concern than even Public Safety and certainly of greater concern than than bad guys safety.

Once I knew that there were hostages inside, ensuring their safety and getting them to a safe location was paramount. I should also mention that one of the challenges we had initially was the fact that we didn't have the ability to communicate on our cellular phones; it was a complete blackout zone. At the time we were uncertain whether or not there were some sort of intentional jammers in the area that they had placed simply for that reason or if it was some other some other reasons and it turned out it's a bit of a blackout zone so we actually couldn't use our cell phone.

So being able to call the command staff on my cell phone or receive or send text messages to the command post, and/or receive messages from other members on the ground including operators wasn't something that we had the luxury of having. I needed to go into the bank and speak to the command staff on one of the bank phones, anytime I needed to communicate with them via phone.

I did end up speaking with a Critical Incident Commander about some of our priorities, and we agreed that ensuring the safety of the hostages was paramount. As that's happening I'm also being told that there's an individual upstairs, a pregnant lady upstairs who they think is hiding, and that she needed to obviously be rescued.

So we end up advancing towards a staircase where I see a young patrolman just kind of holding this staircase, and begin to call out upstairs to see if anyone actually is in fact upstairs. After a couple call outs I could hear her sobbing and responding and it's at that time that we let her know that we're the police department, she's going to see guns we're going to come up and get her, and that's what we end up doing.

We advance up the staircase using immediate rapid deployment tactics with some patrol officers, and a couple of the remaining GVERT operators that we had at the time and grab hold of her. We bring her back down, so she can be with the other hostages in a safe with other officers. And we begin to clear the upstairs level one. It's at that time that we encountered two locked doors, so that would become another problem.

So in addition to getting the hostages out, another key competing priority is the fact that we have this illusive third suspect that might be out there, and who might be in one of the two locked doors upstairs on the top level.

Jon Becker: With Scott Hursten upstairs in the bank are several Patrol members who initially secured the hallway as well as former team member Steve Cowen and current team members Rob Woods, Cam Steven, Mike Yarosh and Travis Allnut.

At this point Travis still has an untreated gunshot wound to his thigh.

Here is Rob Woods.

Rob Woods: The other guys who were up there with me ended up clearing the two bathrooms and we found that the last two doors at the end of the hallway were locked. And with the information that all the hostages had been located safely, and that there was one outstanding person. We pushed back to the threshold of the door at the top of the stairs and I ran down and grabbed a shield, so we can just hold that position until we figured out our next moves with that.

We were satisfied to stay there just based on the information that all the hostages were taking care of and there was no real urgency to go into this space if it's another ambush setup or we're just putting ourselves in a bad position.

From here the guys on the ground identified a white sedan that was in the parking lot that was associated with these two suspects. They believe that the trunk of the sedan was ultimately closed by one of the officers in the parking lot during a search of the parking lot after the incident. With the information that there might be a third person outstanding there's a possibility that they may be in the trunk.

So from the position inside the bank, there was a big bay window that overlooked the parking lot and I held an overwatch position from that bay window as I got a clear line of sight to the car, and to the back of the car should anything happen.

Scott Hursten: So once we had ballistic cover up on the top floor I went outside and had some conversations with various guys who were doing a lot of really good work. And one of the guys on my team and ended up running an element to clear the entire parking lot. It was at that time that I learned that one of the vehicles that was in close proximity to the two suspects had a trunk that at the time had been opened, but was intentionally closed by a member when they tried to open it didn't open any longer and again with the information of a third suspect being out there the consideration was that potentially there's a third suspect laying in weight inside the trunk or inside the vehicle and we need to obviously ensure that trunk was open in the safest possible manner.

So that element leader ended up just grabbing a group of guys and they just posted on that trunk.

So now we had three competing priorities: we had the hostages. We had the uncleared rooms upstairs on the top floor. And then we had the third competing priority which was an uncleared trunk all under the looming presence of some third suspect that's out there.

Around this time, we end up getting a large BC Transit van that arrives on scene and ended up tasking a few guys to put an escort together with a point a couple flanks in a rear guard to escort the hostages out. And that's exactly what they do. They escort them out of the bank Northbound through the bank towards the bus where they're essentially put in the bus, and then taken to the police department where they're interviewed and cared for.

Rob Woods: So once we had essentially reduced the problem from three to two we ultimately had a couple other members arrive on scene with our rescue vehicle. And it's that time I end up asking one of the guys to essentially solve the problem of opening this trunk in a safe and clear way and that's essentially what happens it comes back to me to make some recommendations. We want to do some loud voice commands, potentially a dog bark, an NFDD and then potentially if we have to use our rescue vehicle to push the trunk open. Once we pop it open we see a number of items.

Those items include I think somewhere between 8 and 10 long guns, two ammo cans which appear to be wrapped in some sort of fabric which I think we find out later is kevlar, and then there's another device which looks like some sort of incendiary device.

Originally we had guys in the rescue vehicle on glass with their optics looking at it but wouldn't give us a good enough picture, so ended up getting our robot up there and giving us a better picture. It was one of our bomb techs that came up, and was actually viewing some of these images on the screen. And it was her who ultimately said that this looks like some sort of incendiary device. And the recommendation at the time was to back everybody up to 100 meter cordon which is what ultimately ended up happening.

Jon Becker: In the command post at Saanich Police Department the problem just continues to get more complicated. Here is Incident Commander Mike Brown.

Mike Brown: The initial information coming out of that was okay we've got three things in this trunk we've got ammunition armor and potentially an IED as soon. As I heard the letters “IED” I got on the radio and just said, okay that's a minimum 100 meter cordon for standoff and then we ended up sort of sparking up an EOD response to the call.

So we had to call resources over from the Lower Mainland but we were also fortunate locally to have two really good people in that regard.

Number one, and again not in order of importance was Drew. Drew was in the CP with me. Drew is the first bomber we ever trained in the GVERT. And that was back when Drew and I served on tac together. We sent Drew away to Ottawa to become our first bomber so Drew has really good EOD experience.

Then we also had Lane Douglas hunt who's an XERT member still very much active in the EOD community and Lane was able to come to the scene.

So from a command perspective having Drew literally at my side, and laying on the ground was really helpful because this thing ended up becoming I think one of the larger explosives criminal explosives calls certainly in the history of BC maybe even in Canada.

Lane Hunt would certainly be better able to describe it. But my understanding was thousands of rounds of ammunition, body armor, what was described as a potential Molotov cocktail, and then I think there were upwards of 30 some-odd pipe bombs.

I talked to Lane about this after the fact, and said you know what sort of what was the sphere of influence if one of those pipe bombs had gone off and it was substantial-- it would have done a lot of damage.

Jon Becker: Once it is clear that the third suspect is not in the trunk of the vehicle in the parking lot, it falls to Scott Hursten and his team to clear the one remaining locked room in the bank.

Scott Hursten: So by now we're probably two and the problem that we have to solve is just clearing that top floor. We have two doors that are unlocked and one of the team leaders shows up. I explained to him that we have two doors that are unlocked that problem needs to be solved.

I had ongoing dialogue with the command post at the time and we had discussed obviously the option of using explosive force entry. But then over time, the threat of a third suspect being up there was slowly dissipating through some of the conversations and investigative things that have been transpiring over the couple hours. The decision to use technology to kind of soften the ground was made, and so that's ultimately what ends up happening. We end up utilizing I think underdog cameras, and a robot to kind of soften the ground, confirm that the two rooms are vacant, and then clear it physically as well.

I end up turning the scene over to the Lower Mainland Integrated Emergency Response Team who do a fantastic job, and are over there supporting us as best they can. Nothing but appreciation for that team. I get into a vehicle with one of our inspectors and have the opportunity to drive to the hospitals and check on the guys.

For the 3 hours that I've been on scene. I had no idea how the guys were doing. In fact, I remember standing in the threshold of the broken glass vestibule area staring out at the van on a couple occasions looking at the pools of black and red blood and had no idea how the guys were doing or how severe the injuries were.

Jon Becker: In total there were six members that had been shot and were receiving treatment.

What was a 16-man team that morning was reduced to just a few members because in addition to the six injured members, another four would have to be placed on administrative leave because they'd shot the suspects.

In our next episode, we will pick up from this point and discuss the aftermath, the individual members' recoveries and the lessons learned from the incident.