Lawyers clashed during closing submissions Wednesday over whether Paul Nicholas Russell intended to kill when he opened fire on the Vanderhoof RCMP detachment 1 1/2 years ago.
A count of attempted murder is among the nine charges for which Russell is on trial from the Nov. 25, 2021 incident in the community 100 kilometres west of Prince George.
Crown prosecutor David Jardine submitted that Russell launched the midday attack because he was upset that his collection of guns might be taken away due to mental health concerns.
Five days before, Russell's parents received a phone call from the Canadian Firearms Centre, saying he may need a doctor's clearance to keep the firearms. The call appears to have stemmed from a July 2021 encounter with RCMP in which he appeared confused and delusional and was apprehended under the Mental Health Act.
Jardine argued that Russell began the assault by firing off six rounds at RCMP vehicles parked in behind the detachment, but then levelled two more shots as he progressed along Church Avenue with one of them going through a window and piercing a computer terminal on the general duty section on the west side of the detachment.
After turning onto Columbia Street, he fired four shots at the building and then left the area only to return about five minutes later, showing up on the detachment's east side, where he rammed a police vehicle and fired off as many as seven more shots.
Two of them smashed through a window in the traffic section but by then, the detachment's occupants had retreated further into the building.
Jardine submitted Russell launched the initial salvos in a bid to draw RCMP out of the building and take aim at the officers themselves upon returning to the scene.
Defence lawyer Donna Turko contended Crown has failed to prove the requisite intent required to find Russell guilty of the charge.
It was the act of a man suffering from a "definite disconnect from reality," Turko told the court. She suggested Russell's return to the scene had more the markings of suicide by cop, noting that he wasn't wearing body armour and was not even standing behind the vehicle as a form of cover when he got out.
Turko made much of Russell's unconventional behaviour in the aftermath, noting he kept to the speed limit as he headed south along Burrard Avenue with RCMP in pursuit and then signalled before he turned off Highway 16 and into the parking lot of a tire shop where he was arrested.
"If this man wanted to get away with something, why was he driving around the streets in the same car that he used as if nothing happened that day?" Turko said. "He's not trying to get away. I think that shows, yet again, that he's just not computing that he's done something serious."
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Francesca Marzari will issued verdicts on the counts at a later date.
