Nurses testify Matthew Raymond was 'calm,' 'polite' days after shooting

Matthew Raymond was calm and co-operative in the days after he shot and killed two Fredericton city police officers and two civilians, four nurses testified Thursday.

Raymond, 50, is facing four charges of first-degree murder after he shot Donnie Robichaud and Bobbie Lee Wright, then Fredericton Police Force constables Sara Burns and Robb Costello. He shot all four people in a parking lot at 237 Brookside Dr. on Fredericton's north side on Aug. 10, 2018. 

Raymond has admitted to the killings but pleaded not guilty, since his defence lawyers are arguing he was not criminally responsible because of a mental illness.

Registered nurse Reanne Allain testified that on Aug. 13 Raymond was polite, not confused and not "combative."

She said she gave him the pain medication Dilaudid after he complained of pain. After reviewing Raymond's medical history, she said there was also a "standing order" that he be administered antipsychotic medication "as needed."

"He knew the time, he knew it was August, he knew it was 2018, he knew where he was," she said.

"I felt like he was normal."

Nurse Nelly Clarke testified along the same lines. On cross-examination, she said she knew Raymond was given the antipsychotic drug Haloperidol, also known as Haldol, and that there was a standing order. She said she did not give it to him herself.

Allain agreed with Crown prosecutor Claude Hache who asked if Haloperidol was a common medication. Allain said it's prescribed when the patient is dangerous to themselves, if they get confused or "try to pull out tubing."

'I was sure he was going to shoot that gun'

Earlier in court on Thursday, RCMP officers who apprehended Raymond described waiting outside his apartment, wondering if he would shoot them through the walls or door.

RCMP Cpl. Mark Simon was in Fredericton with other emergency response team members for training that day. He was having breakfast with some of the team when he got a call about the shooting shortly after 7 a.m.

Simon described the play-by-play of arriving at the scene and going up the stairs to Raymond's apartment, Apt. 11, in Building C. By that point, Raymond's four victims were already lying dead in the parking lot behind Building D. 

Raymond had also been shot by Fredericton police Const. Brett Arbeau, turning the scene from an active-shooter situation to a barricaded-person one. He was still in his apartment.

RCMP officers sawed through his door and threw in tear gas, court heard, as well as a "recon scout" — a robot on wheels with cameras. The robot sent a live feed to the monitor with the RCMP. Through it, they could see Raymond still had the gun and was pointing it toward where the officers were.

Simon said that through the monitor, he could see Raymond lying on his back with the rifle across his chest. Simon yelled as loudly as he could at Raymond to drop the gun and that he was under the arrest. He could see Raymond's lips moving but he couldn't tell if he was responding or talking to himself. A fire alarm bell was ringing, making it hard to hear anything, he testified.

He could see Raymond raise the rifle up and start targeting the door.

"I shouted to the person in front of me, 'If you can see him, shoot him, if you can see him, shoot him, because he's aiming at us right now,'" Simon said. 

"The members there, they couldn't see him."

As he testified, Simon's voice got louder and his speech quicker when he described looking through the monitor and seeing Raymond raise the gun and wave it back and forth.

"It was just a surreal sensation as I'm looking at him on the monitor, and I know he's just on the other side of that wall pointing the gun, and it was like that wall wasn't even there," Simon pauses.

"Every time he aims that gun you tend to cringe a little bit ... It's almost like an instinctive response, it's almost like as if you're skidding in a vehicle, about to hit the guardrail, and you brace for that impact. You feel like 'it's going to come, it's going to be right now.'"

Another RCMP officer, Cpl. Jeremy Harding, said they decided to go inside the apartment and arrest Raymond as soon as his hands left the rifle. He said Raymond was "fixated" on the robot, and tried to cover it with a towel or T-shirt. He said as soon as that happened, and his hands were off the gun, police burst through the door.

RCMP Jean-Francois Comeau testified he was the first one inside, as he was the one carrying the shield and protecting the other officers.

"We all knew that if the suspect decided to start shooting again he could have got most of us," he said. "I was sure we were going to get shot ... more of us were going to get shot ... It's just dry wall and a little hallway."

He said as he went into the apartment, he couldn't see Raymond because of the tear gas, but then he registered the barrel of the rifle pointed right at him, with ammunition strewn on the floor. 

"I was sure he was going to shoot that gun," Comeau said. So he rushed the suspect and got on top of him with the shield.

"I was still thinking that one of us is going to get shot. I started striking him in the head. To my surprise, he was still fighting us, had his hands clenched, pulling away from us with all the gas we deployed."

Harding testified he saw Raymond's hand going for a large knife by his waist, but Harding removed it first.

On cross-examination, defence lawyer Nathan Gorham asked Comeau how many times he struck Raymond on the head. Comeau said multiple times.

Gorham asked if that force didn't stop him from struggling or stun him. Comeau said no, it did not.

Court also heard from Fredericton police Const. Debbie Stafford, who rode with Raymond in the ambulance on the way to the hospital that morning. Raymond said he understood his rights as she read them to him, she testified.

Taken to Chalmers Hospital

Melanie Harris, a critical care registered nurse at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital, also testified Thursday. She said in the early morning hours of Aug. 11, one day after the shooting, she found him "alert and oriented and was behaving appropriately." She said he was "calm" and "co-operative."

She said at around 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 11, Raymong tried to speak to her, but he had a breathing tube. She gave him a clipboard and a pen, and he wrote something that was mostly illegible. She said she could only make out "lawyer," "ambulance," and "lady officer."

When she asked if he wanted to speak to a lawyer he nodded yes.

She testified she took the note to an officer who was just outside Raymond's room. She said the officer told her that when Raymond's breathing tube was removed in the morning he would be able to contact a lawyer.

The court previously heard from a firearms expert, multiple police officers who responded that morning and residents of the apartment complex. The Crown said earlier in the trial it would call 39 witnesses.

Family members of the victims have been attending the trial daily.

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