(Saskatoon) Before dying of a cocaine overdose in police custody, a mass killer asked the police officers who arrested him how many people he had killed in a stabbing massacre in Saskatchewan, a we learned Tuesday during an investigation.
“How many bodies did I have?” “, says Myles Sanderson in a video captured by the dashboard cameras of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) patrol car.
Three days before he was captured, Sanderson, 32, had gone house to house in the Cree community of James Smith and the neighboring village of Weldon, breaking down doors and attacking people. He killed 11 people and injured 17 others.
On Tuesday, jurors were shown video of Sanderson’s arrest during the coroner’s inquest into the killer’s death.
Sergeant Ken Kane, a Saskatoon police investigator, said Sanderson was surprised no one shot him. “You should have,” Sanderson repeatedly tells officers in the video. The video shows Sanderson’s knees buckle and he begins to convulse.
The killer was given naloxone, a medication used to reverse opioid overdoses. An officer also found a rolled up $20 bill and a baggie containing a white substance in Sanderson’s hand, according to the investigation.
Officers performed chest compressions on Sanderson until paramedics arrived and took him to the hospital in an ambulance.
The Dr Shaun Ladham, a forensic pathologist, told the inquest that Sanderson died from cocaine intoxication.
“There was so much cocaine” in his system, said the Dr Ladham.
A toxicologist testified that blood samples taken from Sanderson contained one of the highest levels of cocaine she had ever seen.
“A very, very high level,” said Jennifer Billinsky, who tested Sanderson’s samples.
There were no traces of alcohol, fentanyl or methamphetamine.
Darryl Burns, whose sister was killed in the community, said he felt a surge of emotions watching the video of Sanderson’s arrest.
“I didn’t understand what I was going through. I didn’t know if it was anger or relief or what it was,” Mr. Burns said during a break.
“It’s not that he was dead, but the danger was gone,” Mr Burns said.
A risky move to stop the killer
Sanderson had been on the run for several days when police caught up with him on September 7, 2022.
The investigation had already revealed how Sanderson managed to evade police for three days and seven hours after the murders. A woman called police to say Sanderson had broken into her home and stolen her truck, quickly sparking an area-wide search.
The officer, Brianne Hathaway, who was in an unmarked vehicle, told the inquest she spotted the truck and began following it as it headed toward Highway 11, the main road leading to Saskatoon from the north.
Dashboard video shows the truck pulling into a gas station parking lot, onto a gravel road, and then onto the highway in the wrong direction.
Police chase the truck at full speed as Sanderson heads into oncoming traffic. He crosses the grass and enters the southbound lanes.
Officer Heidi Marshall said this gave her the opportunity to perform a difficult and risky vehicle maneuver to stop the killer. For a moment, she thought about her two young children at home, and what a mistake could mean for them, she said.
“It quickly slipped my mind,” she told the inquest.
The video shows Mme Marshall drives his vehicle into the truck, forcing it to turn. The truck goes into a ditch.
” I got it. I got it,” said Mme Marshall in the video.
As the officers removed Sanderson from the truck and arrested him, Mr.me Hathaway said he recognized her. He asked her if she was in the truck following him.
The coroner’s inquest, which is expected to last a week in Saskatoon, is required by law because Sanderson died while in custody. This involves establishing where, when and how Sanderson died. The jury, made up of six people, can make recommendations.
A separate inquiry into the killings last month examined each of the killings and issued more than two dozen recommendations.