New podcast goes inside response to deadly Saanich bank shootout

Fifteen months after the shootout at a Saanich , B.C., bank that left two suspects dead and six police officers with gunshot wounds, several of the first responders that day are now sharing their stories.

The details come in a podcast produced by the Victoria Police Union and include the voices of 911 operators and officers, including the head of the Emergency Response Team that took the call.

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The incident unfolded on June 28, 2022, when 22-year-old twins Mathew and Isaac Auchterlonie entered a Bank of Montreal on Shelbourne Street, taking hostages, before engaging with police in a deadly exchange of gunfire in the parking lot outside.

“That morning started off like any other morning for us,” Staff Sgt. John Musicco tells listeners in one episode the six-part True Blue podcast.

“This call came over the radio of a bank robbery — and something about it just didn’t sound right,” adds Const. Ben King.

The podcast, which runs roughly five hours in length, details the harrowing minutes from the E-Comm 911 dispatcher who first took the call and listened as it unfolded, through to the flurry of gunfire that injured six officers.

Const. Tom Stamatakis Jr. with the Victoria Police Union said the series gives listeners an inside look of one of the darkest days in Vancouver Island policing.

“This gives you a very in depth, behind-the-scenes, first-person account of exactly what was happening and the processes that each member goes through after the fact,” he said.

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While the public has heard witness accounts and official reports of the shootout’s bloody climax, the podcast gives voice to responding officers’ experience for the first time.

“The shock catches up to you and you’re like, ‘I might die here — I don’t know,'” says Const. Ben King of the deadly exchange.

“I don’t want to shut my eyes because I’m going to die if I shut my eyes.”

At another point, Musicco, a tactical team leader with the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team, describes how when the Auchterlonies exited the bank they saw a window and took it.

“It’s obvious what happens after that — is it is a significant exchange of gunfire, which results in both of those suspects dying and six of the seven of us in the van being shot,” he explains.

The podcast also touches on the emotional toll of the incident.

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“I truly thought that my friends were dying,” King tells listeners at one point. “You want to fight that much harder, because you’re like, ‘I’m not orphaning that guy’s kid.'”

B.C.’s civilian police watchdog, the Independent Investigations Office, ruled officers were justified in using deadly force against the Auchterlonies, who it said “posed a clear and imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm to officers and to the public.”

The pair had been dressed in body armour and armed with 7.62-millimetre calibre SKS semi-automatic rifles with extended magazines, and police later found a cache of weapons and makeshift explosives in their car.

The RCMP’s Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit later revealed it believed the twins’ primary objective was to shoot and kill police in what they saw as a stand against government regulations, particularly gun laws.

You can listen to the podcast here.