SAULT STE. MARIE, Ont. — The man who killed four people — including three of his own children — before turning a gun on himself in Sault Ste. Marie had been charged four years ago with assaulting a police officer, court records show.
Family have identified the gunman behind this week’s shooting rampage in the northern Ontario city as Bobbie Hallaert.
Documents obtained by The Canadian Press show Hallaert was charged in December 2019 with assaulting a police officer in Sault Ste. Marie.
The documents show he received a conditional discharge and was ordered for 12 months to keep the peace, not posses any weapons, as well as participate in alcohol abuse counselling, among other conditions.
Hallaert’s uncle has said the family is struggling to understand what happened on Monday night, when Hallaert gunned down multiple victims before taking his own life.
“It’s just tragic, I hope he rots in hell,” Dirk Hallaert told The Canadian Press in an interview.
Police have called what happened a case of intimate partner violence and have not released the identities of those involved.
They have said the shooter first broke into a home on Monday night and killed a 41-year-old woman before heading to a second home and killing three children _ aged six, seven and 12 _ and shooting another woman, aged 45, who survived.
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The 44-year-old shooter was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.
Ginger Gamble, who lives across the street from the first home Bobbie Hallaert targeted, said the woman who died there had been Hallaert’s partner and had talked in late September about his bad temper.
Gamble said she spoke to Hallaert herself once and found him “kind of scary.”
“He had a presence about him that you feel with your gut,” she said.
Chief Hugh Stevenson has said police got a domestic violence call from one of the two homes involved in the gunman’s rampage a day before the shootings took place.
Stevenson has not released further details but has said the shooter was involved in intimate partner investigations in the past.
Officers found two guns — a long gun and a handgun — at the home where the three children were found dead, police said.
— with files from Liam Casey
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