'Adrenaline was pumping': RCMP officer shot in 2015 helped take down Onanole suspects
The scars have faded but Sgt. Mark Hume still has a few shotgun pellets lodged deep beneath his skin from when he was shot on duty in western Manitoba in 2015, not far from where another Mountie was seriously injured during a shooting last week.
He was among dozens of RCMP officers involved in an hours-long manhunt after Cpl. Graeme Kingdon, a former co-worker of Hume's, was shot while responding to a report of break-in near Onanole, about 220 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.
Hume was shot outside a home in Kemnay, Man., in May 2015. It was the last shooting of an RCMP officer in Manitoba prior to last week.
Late Wednesday night, he was getting ready for bed when the phone rang.
"The adrenaline was pumping then. I wasn't really thinking of the Kemnay incident at all," said Hume, who works as a supervisor in the RCMP traffic services unit based in Brandon, Man.
"I knew how many people came out to help with the shooting that I was involved with, so really, I just wanted to go help with anything I could do."
The chase ended outside a home in Neepawa, about 60 kilometres southeast of Onanole, after a tense standoff. RCMP officers arrested the fourth and final suspect connected to the shooting.
An 18-year-old man was charged with attempted murder, with another 20 charges shared between he and three other men.
Similarities between shootings
The details don't match up perfectly, but there were a few similarities between what happened to both men.
Kingdon and his partner were fired upon as soon as they stepped out of their cruiser. Kingdon was rushed to hospital with serious injuries and is in stable condition; his partner was uninjured.
In Hume's case, he and his partner were called to a home in Kemnay to investigate a domestic assault. They found two women injured in a vehicle in the driveway who told them the man inside might have a gun.
Hume recalls a man on the porch threatened to shoot them if they didn't get off the property before running into the home. The officers tried to take cover, but the first shot came quickly, about 30 seconds later, Hume recalls.
Tucked behind a tree with his partner, Hume was hit with six shotgun pellets up his left leg and side.
"Then I jumped to my feet to turn and he shot a second time and struck me in the arm twice," Hume said.
"For me, as a supervisor, I was mainly worried about the bigger picture. I had several members to be responsible for and several houses where I was afraid there was people and children."
RCMP were in a standoff for just under an hour outside the Kemnay home. It wasn't until a friend of the suspect messaged him that negotiations came to a close and a 48-year-old man turned himself in.
This past May, the man who shot Hume was sentenced to 13 years for attempted murder.
Hume, along with his police officer sister and other family, was at the sentencing to share the impact the shooting had on him. He said, at first, he didn't take the potentially deadly attack personally, but that changed with time.
A week after being shot and still recovering, a lawnmower backfired from a few yards away and startled Hume.
"Got the sweats from that," he said.
Then during his first shift back on the job, a report of shots fired came into the station. A Brandon Police officer was seriously stabbed months later.
Those experiences, combined with the fatal 2014 shooting of four people, including two officers, in New Brunswick, added up to Hume feeling the suspects in these cases share something in common.
"My opinion was he was shooting at the uniform. I had never met him," he said, adding police "aren't the bad guys out to get them."
"I take it as a disrespect for authority. Maybe it's more than that, maybe it's not, but that's kind of how I look at it."
Hume described Kingdon as quiet person involved in his community.
He sent Kingdon well-wishes over Facebook after Kingdon's wife reached out to members involved in the massive effort to nab suspects in last week's shooting.
"I kept it short and sweet, [I'm] not a big emotional person. I just said speedy recovery" Hume said.
"I think I'd rather talk to him when he's out and talk about recovery than speak to him in his hospital bed."
Hume feels for the most part people still respect police but the two shootings underscore the risks officers face every day.
"You trick yourself into thinking that we're in rural Manitoba, chances of these things happening are still there but it's not New York City, it's not Toronto," he said.
"Now I think it's become a pretty stark reality that they could happen."
