“I don’t want to leave my family without a mom.”
That is what Cst. Heidi Marshall of the RCMP said she was thinking as she chased a mass murderer through a Saskatchewan gas station and south down the northbound lanes of Highway 11 in Sept. 2022.
She said she was convinced it would be her last day alive.
Myles Sanderson sped down the wrong lanes towards Warman, reaching speeds of 160 kilometres an hour in a stolen Chevrolet Avalanche, tailed by Marshall and several other police cruisers.
Three days earlier he went on a killing rampage on James Smith Cree Nation and in Weldon, kicking in doors and attacking people.
Marshall and several other officers testified at an inquest into his death on Tuesday and Wednesday, dashcam footage from the pursuit and arrest playing on a screen during their testimony.
They told jurors what was going through their minds as they pursued the most sought-after man in the province in 2022.
“It was game on,” Marshall said. “It was almost robotic.”
The inquest watched as Marshall tailed Sanderson for approximately 15 kilometres, narrowly missing oncoming traffic, before Sanderson off-roaded through the ditch and into the correct lanes.
Marshall stayed hot on his tail.
“I was getting ready to die. I had to get the vehicle off the road,” she said.
With the oncoming traffic safe in the lanes across the ditch, Marshall executed a flawless pit manouever – something she said she had no training in – spinning Sanderson off the road and disabling the vehicle.
Video showed officers raising their guns as they approached the Avalanche, using a police cruiser as cover to get closer.
Cst. Bill Rowley said he thought it would come to a shootout.
“There was a full expectation that he was either coming out with a knife or a gun,” Rowley said. “He was coming out to finish some unfinished business.”
Rowley ripped open the door of the Avalanche. All of Sanderson, besides a leg, was hidden within the airbag that deployed when the truck crashed into the ditch.
Rowley said he saw Sanderson reach back and forth between the centre console and his mouth three separate times, but he didn’t see a weapon in his hands.
A knife had already been removed from the passenger side of the Avalanche by another officer.
Realizing Sanderson was unarmed, Rowley, with the help of Cst. Travis Adema, forced Sanderson out of the driver’s seat and onto the ground.
He also said Sanderson was laughing as he was being handcuffed.
Rowley testified remembering how clean Sanderson was despite being on the run for three days. He said he noticed an absence of blood and dirt on his clothes and there was no body odour.
Forcing him up against the side of a police cruiser, the video showed Cst. Adema searching Sanderson, finding a flashlight, lighter, cigarette, a rolled up $20 bill and a bag of white powder on him.
“I saw a tuft of plastic,” Adema said, as he described taking the bag from Sanderson’s hand.
According to Rowley, Sanderson stopped “dead in his tracks” when officers tried to put him in the back of a cruiser.
He said Sanderson went rigid.
“I had experienced that before, I knew what was happening,” Rowley said.
He said Sanderson’s eyes started rolling in the back of his head and blood started coming out of his nose and mouth.
“I knew that he was dying.”
Officers laid Sanderson on the ground before he started convulsing, administering naloxone and CPR. EMS arrived within minutes.
Advanced care paramedic Calvin Heuer testified he flatlined in the ambulance.
Forensic pathologist Shaun Ladham said Sanderson was pronounced deceased at Saskatoon Royal University Hospital from a cocaine overdose.
— With files from The Canadian Press.