Alberta's police watchdog lauds officers for getting kids to safety during gunfight

Police attend a crime scene in Calgary, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Alberta’s police watchdog is hailing a pair of officers for their bravery last year when they pulled two children to safety as a domestic dispute turned into a gun battle.

A report by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team says RCMP and the Grande Prairie Police Service received calls in November about a man taking his spouse and her three children against their will in his truck.

The man was prohibited from having contact with the woman, but she told investigators he showed up at her home and threatened to shoot the deadbolt on her door. She let him in, the report says, and he sat at her table with a shotgun pointed at himself for five hours, threatening that she would have to watch him eat his last meal.

He eventually forced the women and children into his truck, the report says.

“One of us is going to die,” she said the man told her. “We are going to go to a park and we’re going to go play like a normal family.”

Officers believed he might be armed, since he had a licence for long guns and handguns.

Police spotted the truck, but it sped off. The report says the man drove erratically for several blocks before hitting a curb, causing a tire to explode. Soon after, the truck left the road and flipped onto its roof.

Police rushed to the upside-down truck. An officer saw children’s boots on the ground and began to cut away at the truck’s deployed airbags to get to those inside.

“While doing so, he observed the barrel of a long gun and yelled, ‘Gun, gun, gun!’,” Matthew Block, acting executive director of the watchdog agency, said in the report.

A second officer grabbed two children from the rear of the truck and, with the first officer, they ran to safety. As they were doing so, the man fired his gun and an officer fired five shots back at the truck, hitting the man in his shoulder.

The woman and one child were still inside the vehicle but weren’t injured by the gunfire.

The man crawled out of the truck’s window and surrendered.

The report says the two officers who rescued the two children, knowing there was a gun in the truck, are “deserving of commendation for their selfless actions.”

“This brave act protected the two children at considerable risk to (the officers), which was almost realized when the (man) fired near them,” Block wrote.

Block said the Mountie who shot at the truck acted reasonably, even though the woman and one of her children were still inside.

“There are occasions where the risk of harm to third parties could cause the analysis to be different, but that is not the case given the facts here and the danger that the (man) posed,” Block said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 10, 2026.

Rob Drinkwater, The Canadian Press