Fatal Bathurst police shooting confounds local residents

Two days after a Tracadie-Sheila man was shot and killed by Bathurst police, people in northern New Brunswick have more questions than answers.

Nova Scotia RCMP have been called in to investigate and are not releasing much information about the case.

But a new video obtained by CBC News sheds some light on what happened just moments after the 51-year-old man was shot outside the Via Rail station.

The video, taken by a local amateur videographer, shows people at the scene tending to the wounded man on the ground, attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

On Wednesday afternoon, RCMP officially identified the man who was later pronounced dead at Chaleur Regional Hospital as being Michel Vienneau.

His electronics store in Tracadie-Sheila, Liaison Électronique, remains closed and people in the community are still coming to terms with the news.

Anne-Marie Brideau, owner of a neighbouring business, A & R Musik, says she isn't sure what to think.

Right now, we just have to wait to see what's going to happen.- Bathurst Coun. Anne Marie Gammon

"He was like a brother to me," she said in French. "He was very close to my heart."

The incident is also still top of mind in Bathurst, said Coun. Anne Marie Gammon.

"A few minutes ago I asked somebody I know, and I said, 'How do you feel?' She said, 'All I know is there's other details that they can't tell us right now,'" she said.

City council has the same limited information as the media as its oversight committee has no extra power in this situation, said Gammon.

"Right now, we just have to wait to see what's going to happen," she said. "It's not a state of emergency. If it was a state of emergency then that committee would be activated, and there's two or three city councillors on that committee."

The lack of information is a point of frustration among some of the area residents CBC News spoke to on Wednesday.

"Why were there all those policemen there? I don't know. We'd like to know all about that. There must have been something," said Georgina Haché.

​Lionel Bernard agrees. "We pay them with our tax, so they should tell us more about what's going on," he said.

But Dollard Poirier said people need to let the police do their jobs.

"We're a bunch of lookey-loos," he said. "That's our problem."

"They've got an independent police force, the RCMP, and they're going to investigate it and what'll happen, it'll come out."

Vienneau was inside his car when he was shot by plainclothes officers conducting an investigation. He had just gotten off a train from Montreal.

Police have declined to discuss the nature of that investigation.

The area around the train station remained cordoned off on Wednesday.

A team of about eight major crime investigators from Nova Scotia RCMP will remain in Bathurst for a few more days, investigating, Sgt. Alain LeBlanc has said.

LeBlanc could not say if their findings will be made public.

The Bathurst officers involved in the incident have been reassigned to administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation, he said.