(Toronto) Lawyers for the man accused of killing an OPP officer and injuring two others last week deny the “ambush” thesis.
Alain Bellefeuille, 39, is charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in a May 11 shooting that left OPP Sergeant Eric Mueller for dead .
After the incident, OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique said Sergeant Mueller and two other officers were “ambushed” when they responded to a report at a home in Bourget, east of Ottawa.
ONTARIO PROVINCIAL POLICE PHOTO BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
Sergeant Eric Mueller was killed during the operation.
“It was not an ambush,” Mr. Bellefeuille’s lawyers, John Hale and Cassandra Richards, said in a statement on Friday.
“We hope that the public — including potential jurors — will remain open to the possibility of an alternate account of events. »
The statement said Mr Bellefeuille “did not ask or expect the police to show up at his home in the middle of the night”.
He said Bellefeuille was asleep in his bed with the lights off when police arrived and he only called 911 after the incident “to get help.”
Lawyers said they would not comment further and that any further information about his actions that day “will be reserved for the trial.”
Sergeant Mueller, 42, a father of two, was described as an exemplary officer by his colleagues and those who paid their last respects at his funeral this week. He is the 10e police officer to be killed on the job in Canada since September 2022, and the fifth to be shot and killed in Ontario during the same period.
The Special Investigations Unit is investigating after the Ontario Provincial Police forensic team uncovered evidence that one of the surviving officers fired his weapon at some point after they arrived at the scene .