James Roszko, 46, shot and killed four Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables on his farm about 11 kilometres north of Rochfort Bridge near Mayerthorpe, Alberta, on 3 March 2005, then killed himself.[1] The dead were constables Anthony Gordon, Lionide “Leo” Johnston, Brock Myrol and Peter Schiemann, gunned down between about 9:57 and 10:00 a.m. while guarding a crime scene.[1][2] Not since 1885 had so many Canadian police officers been killed in a single incident.[2]
The officers were executing a search warrant for stolen property and a marijuana-growing operation.[1] A day earlier two bailiffs had come to repossess a truck Roszko had stopped paying for; with RCMP present they opened a Quonset hut and found a stolen-vehicle chop shop and a marijuana grow operation.[1][2] A specialist RCMP Green Team then searched the property through the night, seizing seven living and 88 harvested marijuana plants from the residence and 192 living plants with growing equipment from the hut.[1]
Constables Gordon and Johnston stayed to guard the scene overnight, and Schiemann and Myrol joined them in the morning; shortly after all four entered the hut, gunfire was heard.[1][2] A fifth officer, Constable Vigor, exchanged fire with Roszko and is believed to have wounded him before Roszko retreated inside.[2] Reinforcements with armoured vehicles surrounded the hut, and a robot sent in around 2 p.m. found the four officers and Roszko dead, Roszko of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot.[2]
Two men who drove the enraged Roszko back to the farm that night, Shawn Hennessey and Dennis Cheeseman, later pleaded guilty to manslaughter for helping him return.[1]
