WATCH: The young woman who filmed the moment Constable Doug Larche was shot sat down with Global News today and the impact it has had on her. Alex Abdelwahab reports.
MONCTON – Nearly a year after the RCMP shootings, one of the most haunting moments remains a video filmed by a north-Moncton resident the moment Const. Doug Larche was shot.
Vanessa Bernatchez, the young woman who filmed the video, never expected it would be viewed so many times, nor did she expect the backlash she’s received since then.
Bernatchez recorded the short, dramatic video through the living room window of her mother’s house. She told Global News she originally posted it on Facebook to let her family outside the city know what was happening.
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Bernatchez said the comments made an already challenging situation worse.
“I was still kind of dealing with that guilt,” she said. “Because in my eyes, it was kind of like we could have done more.”
She said it got to the point where she felt like she deserved to be the target of the comments.
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It got so bad that Bernatchez eventually contacted RCMP. She said doing that actually made her feel better, because officers were very supportive and reassured her that she had done the right thing.
She said they told her not to be ashamed of what she did, and that it would help the RCMP when the shooter, Justin Bourque, went to court. RCMP officers also told her the best thing she could have done was to stay in her house and if she had tried to intervene it would have put more lives at risk.
Bernatchez’s video was entered as evidence in the case against Bourque, who was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.
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New Brunswick RCMP were not available to comment on Monday.
Bernatchez said the images still haunt her.
“It’s something that replays in my head all the time. Even like certain sounds will trigger it for me,” she said. “I have a hard time sleeping. I’m up until 4 in the morning every day.”
Bernatchez still lives in Moncton, but moved out of her mother’s house a week after the shootings. She said it was too difficult to have to walk past the site where it happened day after day.
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