Kind, a wonderful person, an infectious smile.
Chris Williams had gracious words for Heidi Stevenson, the RCMP officer killed in last weekend’s mass shooting in Portapique, N.S., that left at least 23 dead.
In an interview on Tuesday, Williams told Global News that the thing he’ll remember most from his fellow trainee at RCMP boot camp back in 1995 is her smile.
“She had an absolutely infectious smile that would light up the room and that you could see from a mile away,” said Williams, now retired in Kelowna, B.C., after 22 years with the Mounties.
“It didn’t matter how much stress she was under, what was going on — that smile would be constant.”
He and Stevenson were members of Troop 11 while attending RCMP depot in Regina. Following graduation, he said they kept in touch occasionally via social media.
“Obviously now, I wish I could go back and have more time to share with her, but I consider myself very lucky to have been a part of her life and to have her as a part of mine.”
In describing Stevenson, Williams said she had a great personality, and was laid back and fun-loving.
Williams acknowledged policing is a high-risk job, and calls can sometimes suddenly go off the rails.
“And that’s where it’s important where we have good leadership, to be able to react quickly when something like this does occur.”
He said he was hearing conflicting information from the RCMP via the media on that Sunday morning.
“We first heard that the suspect was in custody. We later learned that the suspect was deceased,” he said.
“I think that moving forward, it’s going to be important that the RCMP is as open and honest with everybody. There’s a lot of questions. Not just (from) members of the RCMP, but members of the public in Halifax, in Nova Scotia.
“Those people are grieving and need answers.”
Specifically, Williams said the RCMP needs to drop its communication strategy of providing as little information as possible.
“They have an obligation to the public to give full disclosure of details they know, when they know them,” he said.
“I think that the minute that there was any kind of an indication that there was more than one crime scene, that this individual was possibly dressed as a police officer in a police car, it should have been incumbent on the RCMP to release those details to the public to allow them to protect themselves.”
The RCMP in Nova Scotia have said they put information out on Twitter because their account has tens of thousands of followers, and the shooting unfolded over half the day with many details changing quickly.