Witnesses to Wednesday’s armed attack at Parliament Hill described a morning of confusion and distress.
Ottawa resident Chris Viau was walking to work near the National War Memorial when he believes he heard two shots.
“They (the soldiers on duty at the memorial) were doing their march and they had their rifles, and he came out and fired a shot at one of the soldiers. He went down and the other soldiers went to his aid and then everybody started running,” Viau recalled, saying the gunman was six metres away from a soldier who appeared to be in his 20s.
“Then (the shooter) ran up towards the Parliament buildings,” said Viau. He said the man had long, black hair and was holding a single-shot rifle, wearing a grey jacket and a scarf.
“It feels like it didn’t really happen,” said Viau. “People were just taking pictures of them doing their ceremony.”
Yan Lugtenborg from the Netherlands believes he heard four shots. He saw a man who appeared to him to be possibly Aboriginal.
“It happened so quickly. I saw a little man with black hair crossing (the street) with a rifle over to Parliament Hill,” he said. “You don’t expect this in Canada.”
Chuck Bromley said he also saw the man running. The man jumped over a fence onto Parliament Hill carrying a long gun.
Then, outside the East Block building on the Hill, construction worker Scott Walsh heard shots and climbed out of the manhole he was working in.
“We heard a couple bangs, then I saw people running and screaming,” Walsh said. His description of the gunman matched Viau’s, though he believes he held a double-barrelled shotgun. The man had a scarf over his face, and looked over his shoulders as he ran.
Walsh said the man passed at least a dozen people, including a woman with a stroller. He says the man then hijacked a black car at gunpoint from a man dressed in a suit.
The suspect was seen taking this car from a man in a suit.
Walsh said he also saw a man with a similar scarf to the gunman, though it wasn’t covering his face. He said the man leaned against a fence and didn’t react as people were running, and vanished shortly after.
“Everyone else was screaming and running and this man was just very content sitting like that. So I screamed to my work buddy to jump the fence,” Walsh said.
“Prior to this, we were talking about the threats to Parliament and all the things going on around the world and I was just blown away,” Walsh said.
The car drove roughly 150 metres up to Centre Block. That’s when House of Commons cafeteria worker Alain Merizier saw the man get out and enter the building.
“He went inside the Parliament and there was one shot,” Merizier said. “Then the RCMP came up behind him and then the security.”
Merizier took a photo of the car the man had abandoned. The black Chrysler sedan is the same model used by security personnel around the Hill.
Shortly after, Liberal MP John McKay heard popping sounds inside Centre Block as he was about to head into the Liberal caucus room on the first floor.
“I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was construction. And then the security guards come and said: ‘Up, everybody up, everybody out.’ So because we were in the basement, I just went out the back door.”
Construction workers then told McKay and passersby to hide behind the building’s monuments in order to shield themselves from the windows.
“So we huddled there for a while and then by some means or other we got the all-clear and came down off Parliament Hill.”
Some construction workers told the Citizen they saw a distressed woman open a Centre Block window, ready to jump six metres down. Crews say they used a ladder to get the woman to safety before police evacuated the scene.
Journalist Peter Henderson spoke with the Citizen by phone while huddling among a dozen people in the corner of a Centre Block room.
“We heard a series of bangs from the stairwell in rapid succession,” said Henderson, who wasn’t sure if they were gunshots. He saw an MP running through the halls saying there was a gunman on the loose and to take cover.
“It’s all pretty nerve-racking. It’s terrifying,” said Henderson, saying the people he was with were talking in hushed tones and trying to make light of the situation.
Members of the NDP caucus Wednesday evening described the scene that occurred in their caucus room while the shots were being fired.
MP Megan Leslie and MP Libby Davies both said a member of the security service entered the room, locked the door and blocked it. MPs were told to get down, which they did. Initially some MPs weren’t sure what the commotion was all about out in the hallway until the security guard made the motion of a gunman cocking his rifle.
Once the attack was finished, MPs were let out of the room and into a tunnel which brought them to the nearby East Block building. There they were put into lockdown for 10 hours. It was unclear if they were still in danger so MPs sat under desks to remain safe.
Meanwhile, Liberal MP McKay described Parliament as “the people’s building” and noted that Canadians and members of the public have had access to it for a long time.
“This changes everything,” McKay said.
– With a file from Mark Kennedy.
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