protest against British Columbia Hydro Dawson Creek dam — unconnected person wearing anonymous mask gets shot dead

Sept 23, 2015

Ter­ry Had­land, a Peace Riv­er farmer, says he should have got the police bul­let that killed a man wear­ing a Guy Fawkes mask out­side a Site C open house this sum­mer.

“He cre­at­ed a diver­sion so I could get away,” Mr. Had­land told The Globe and Mail in an inter­view. “He stepped up and took that shot for me, that’s for sure.”

RCMP were called to the open house in Daw­son Creek on July 16 after get­ting calls about a man caus­ing a dis­tur­bance at the British Colum­bia Hydro pub­lic infor­ma­tion ses­sion.

One day after the hack­er group Anony­mous vowed to “avenge one of our own” fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, the group is claim­ing to have crashed parts of the RCMP web­site on Sun­day morn­ing.

A Twit­ter account asso­ci­at­ed with the glob­al activist group has post­ed pho­tos show­ing the Daw­son Creek RCMP web­site serv­er sta­tus list­ed as “down.”

- See more at: http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/dawson-creek/police-mum-on-link-between-police-shooting-anonymous-group‑1.2005056#sthash.SbEOrEJA.dpuf

Mr. Had­land said he was the man caus­ing trou­ble, but he left before police arrived, and offi­cers con­front­ed anoth­er man, who was report­ed­ly car­ry­ing a knife and wear­ing the trade­mark mask of the hack­tivist group Anony­mous. Moments lat­er, shots were fired, and James McIn­tyre, a dish­wash­er at Le’s Fam­i­ly Restau­rant, was dead out­side the Stone­bridge Hotel’s Fixx Urban Grill.

In response to the shoot­ing, Anony­mous promised ret­ri­bu­tion, sub­se­quent­ly post­ing a 2014 Trea­sury Board memo about Cana­di­an Secu­ri­ty Intel­li­gence Ser­vice fund­ing, and threat­en­ing to leak more mate­r­i­al.

One day after the hack­er group Anony­mous vowed to “avenge one of our own” fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, the group is claim­ing to have crashed parts of the RCMP web­site on Sun­day morn­ing.

A Twit­ter account asso­ci­at­ed with the glob­al activist group has post­ed pho­tos show­ing the Daw­son Creek RCMP web­site serv­er sta­tus list­ed as “down.”

- See more at: http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/dawson-creek/police-mum-on-link-between-police-shooting-anonymous-group‑1.2005056#sthash.SbEOrEJA.dpuf

One day after the hack­er group Anony­mous vowed to “avenge one of our own” fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, the group is claim­ing to have crashed parts of the RCMP web­site on Sun­day morn­ing.

A Twit­ter account asso­ci­at­ed with the glob­al activist group has post­ed pho­tos show­ing the Daw­son Creek RCMP web­site serv­er sta­tus list­ed as “down.”

- See more at: http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/dawson-creek/police-mum-on-link-between-police-shooting-anonymous-group‑1.2005056#sthash.hTyGNWmh.dpuf

Anony­mous has already begun its retal­i­a­tion cam­paign, knock­ing the main RCMP web­sites offline for sev­er­al hours on Sun­day (19 July).

This is part of the group’s cam­paign to “remove the RCMP cyber infra­struc­ture from the Inter­net” as it calls on mem­bers to “march, cre­ate and sign peti­tions, hack, dox [until] all demand and jus­tice is met”.

The hack­i­tivst col­lec­tive has also offered to raise funds for the vic­tim’s bur­ial.

Doxxing

The group lead­ing the cam­paign — Oper­a­tion Anon Down — also tweet­ed on Mon­day (20 July) that it had accessed doc­u­ments marked “secret” inside the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment, warn­ing: “It’s not just a DDoS op any­more kid­dos.”

#Anon­Down has accessed docs marked “secret” inside Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment. It’s not just a DDoS op any­more kid­dos. More tomor­row. Night all.
— Oper­a­tion Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 20, 2015

In an emailed state­ment released over the week­end, Anony­mous vowed to “iden­ti­fy the RCMP offi­cer involved, thor­ough­ly dox him — and release that dox on the Inter­net. Because the world has a right to know every detail about killer cops.”

Anony­mous has a patchy his­to­ry with “doxxing” police offi­cers accused of shoot­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic how­ev­er, with one mem­ber of Anony­mous hav­ing incor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied the offi­cer accused of shoot­ing Michael Brown in Fer­gu­son last year.

Mr. Had­land, 66, said he did not know Mr. McIn­tyre, 48, and regrets that his actions inad­ver­tent­ly brought police into con­flict with him. “It’s trag­ic, that’s for damn sure,” he said. “They were try­ing to get me.”

Mr. Had­land said if police had found him instead of Mr. McIn­tyre, the inci­dent would have end­ed peace­ful­ly. “I would have obeyed them,” he said.

Mr. Had­land, who lives off the grid on a farm in the Peace Riv­er dis­trict, said he went to the open house to protest against the con­tro­ver­sial Site C dam.

“I’d been plan­ning it for a cou­ple of weeks,” he said. “I walked into the room … I thought, ‘I’m just going to push them a bit.’”

Mr. Had­land said BC Hydro offi­cials were talk­ing to mem­bers of the pub­lic at infor­ma­tion tables cov­ered with pam­phlets, maps and posters.

“I flipped a cou­ple [of tables],” he said. “I ripped up the rest of the maps …. They had plac­ards. … I start­ed break­ing up those.”

Mr. Had­land said he was quick­ly sur­round­ed by BC Hydro staff, but the con­fronta­tion did not become vio­lent.

“They didn’t try to push me,” he said. “I made my state­ment and I walked out.”

Mr. Had­land said he assumes 911 calls were made dur­ing his protest, but added that if any­one report­ed a vio­lent inci­dent, then the police were mis­in­formed and may have arrived expect­ing seri­ous trou­ble.

“It was all very peace­ful,” he said. “The police could have showed up and been ami­ca­ble.”

When it was sug­gest­ed that tip­ping over tables and tear­ing up posters might seem threat­en­ing to some, Mr. Had­land agreed.

“Oh, it could have been,” he acknowl­edged.

Mr. Had­land said he passed with­in metres of Mr. McIn­tyre in the park­ing lot but did not see a knife or a mask.

“I thought he was a BC Hydro per­son [because] he kept turn­ing away and try­ing to hide his face,” he said.

Mr. Had­land was wor­ried police were com­ing, so he jumped in his vehi­cle and drove away with­out look­ing back. He said he went to the RCMP the next day, iden­ti­fied him­self as the man who dis­rupt­ed the meet­ing, and told police he was con­cerned some­one had made a 911 call “that wasn’t valid” because his protest was not vio­lent.

Arthur Had­land, a for­mer direc­tor of Peace Riv­er Region­al Dis­trict, con­firmed his cousin was the man who dis­rupt­ed the Site C open house.

The Inde­pen­dent Inves­ti­ga­tions Office (IIO) of B.C. is inves­ti­gat­ing the police shoot­ing of Mr. McIn­tyre.

“It is not our prac­tice to pro­vide spe­cif­ic details about an inves­ti­ga­tion while it is still active – what I can say is that while we obtain all acces­si­ble and avail­able infor­ma­tion we believe is rel­e­vant to the IIO inves­ti­ga­tion, our focus is on the actions of the police offi­cers,” Kel­lie Kil­patrick, an IIO spokesper­son said in an e‑mail.

“Since our inves­ti­ga­tion of the ini­tial dis­tur­bance is a par­al­lel inves­ti­ga­tion to that of the IIO’s inves­ti­ga­tion which is still ongo­ing, it would be inap­pro­pri­ate for me to com­ment at this time,” Cor­po­ral Dave Tyre­man of the RCMP’s North Dis­trict said in a sep­a­rate e‑mail.

BC Hydro spokesman Dave Con­way declined to com­ment on Mr. Hadland’s ver­sion of events.

—

July 2015:

B.C. Hydro Site C protest in Van­cou­ver can­celled due to con­cerns about vio­lence

Ral­ly orga­niz­ers say they’re con­cerned about reac­tion to the recent death of a man in Daw­son Creek

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Fur­ther info