Front Burner - Mass stabbing inquest hears horror, heroism

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Less than a year and a half after a mass stabbing devastated James Smith Cree Nation and surrounding communities in Saskatchewan, a coroner’s inquest began last week into how Myles Sanderson killed 11 people and hurt 17 others. What happened in the days prior to the attacks? What do police analysts say the motive could have been? What supports do community members need now? Jason Warick is a reporter with CBC Saskatoon. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. Before we get started on today's episode, I just want to give you a heads up that we're going to be talking about some distressing violence. So please listen with care. Some of them are carrying grief. Some of them are angry.

Some of them, they're kind of lost right now. But we have the fire there for a reason for them. To help them. Randy Burns is a firekeeper from James Smith Cree Nation. He's one of the many people there who lost family in the mass stabbing that took place on September 4th, 2022. It was one of the worst in Canadian history. Last Monday, he tended to a sacred fire outside an event center in Melfort, Saskatchewan. That's where a coroner's inquest is being held into how Miles Sanderson killed 11 people and injured 17 others.

Sometimes people don't know how to cry. And they put tobacco down there to talk for them. Sanderson had a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest before his rampage. And even after, he eluded police for four days. Sanderson was charged with first-degree murder, but he died in police custody soon after his arrest, meaning he never stood trial. The inquest, which got underway last week and will run for a total of three weeks, includes testimony from police, the parole board, victims, and family members. Jason Wark is a

reporter with CBC Saskatoon. He's here to tell us what the inquest has revealed so far about the massacre on James Smith Cree Nation and its impact on the people who live there. Hey Jason, thanks for coming on Front Burner. You're welcome. So it's still just under a year and a half since the attack and really it was an incomparable trauma for the people of the James Smith Cree Nation. The inquest started this past week. So I guess I'm curious before it began, how were folks in the communities feeling about it? It's unimaginable. The trauma that was experienced on that day, September 4th, 2022, when these mass stabbings occurred, again, 11 people killed and 17 wounded and innumerable

families and communities affected at James Smith Cree Nation, but also in the neighboring village of Weldon, where there was one of the fatalities. I've visited the community a couple of times in the week before the inquest began. They allowed me to come there and to meet with leaders. And I met with the chief coroner, actually, for the province, who was there meeting with families, trying to give them a bit of a warning about what was to come. Let's honor the people that passed away. Let's have their story told, put rumors to rest so people factually know what happened and hopefully we can get some good recommendations at the end. I was able to take in some of the sweats and ceremonies that

were taking place on the First Nation, again about 200 kilometers northeast of Saskatoon, and there was just a sense of heaviness, and that's a word they actually used. Everything was heavy. You could just feel a heaviness in the community. The hurt is still there. The grieving is still there. I'd just like to ask our country, Canada, for many prayers for our people. I think it's going to be very traumatic to see all of the evidence, the physical evidence that's presented. Inquests are very clinical, medical, graphic. There was still a lot of anger, a lot of sadness, but just a lot of tension about what was to come and there was really mixed feelings and those have remained this week,

whether this inquest is even a good idea. The justice system has never, ever been kind to us Native people. So do we have faith in this justice system? Do we have faith in this? I don't think we do. I don't think we do at all. Because history, to us, has been very unjust. They'll be getting answers, but is this just revealing and re-traumatizing people for its own sake?

And give me a sense of how many people in the community are attending the inquest. A decreasing number. There were dozens of people affected by this very directly, and their families. there were only a few dozen people at most at any given time from the James Smith Cree Nation here. That's not including the people who are working to support everyone. So the leaders came and the grief counselors came and the elders came to support all of those people who had to listen to this very graphic, detailed testimony about their loved ones. And many people I talked to at James Smith said that they just didn't feel as though they could come. It was too traumatic. And some do want updates and there are plans in

place to update them regularly, but not have them sit through all of this. So what we heard last week was about what Miles Sanderson and his brother Damien were doing before the attacks leading up to it. And one of the people who testified was Vanessa Burns. So that's Miles Sanderson's former common-law partner. Yes.

Who I understand suffered years of abuse from him. Can you give me a sense of what she told the inquest about that period leading up to the attack? Well, most people say that her words were incredibly powerful, and this was the first time that she has spoken, the longtime partner of the perpetrator of one of the worst mass stabbings in Canadian history. Yeah, it just reopened everything, but I'm ready to move on with my life too. Vanessa Burns talked about her life with Miles Sanderson, how they met when they were in their late teens, how he was very polite and charming at the start, but very quickly it descended with the addictions to alcohol

with the growing violence and course of control they called it and felt she couldn't leave and it just grew and grew and grew weeks before the stabbings vanessa said she drove sanderson around james smith cre nation to sell drugs two days before the attacks sanderson brutally assaulted vanessa while driving his brother damien known for calming Miles down, intervened. But it didn't last. And then culminated in this mass stabbing incident in which we heard testimony that she was likely one of the targets that he actually did not get to. Sanderson killed Vanessa's father, Earl Burns Sr., and stabbed her mother.

Earl tried to chase Sanderson down in a school bus, but the vehicle was found in this ditch with the headlights on. There's another woman who testified too, Skye Sanderson. That's Damien Sanderson's wife. She describes this conversation she had with Damien two weeks before the attacks, where apparently he said, and I'll quote here, I think my brother's the devil or something. And also, I want to effing

kill Vanessa. And when I do, I'm going to kill 10 others. Can you tell me more about what Sky heard from Damien? Well, yes. Sky Sanderson, again, is the longtime partner of Miles Sanderson's brother. So just to refresh everyone's memory, Miles Sanderson is the perpetrator of all of these crimes. And in the early hours of this, some, including RCMP, thought that Damien Sanderson might be doing this as well. And no one at that time knew that Damien Sanderson was actually the first victim of his brother's killing. His body was not discovered until after the others. And so there was a lot of talk about that, but also these conversations that Skye Sanderson had with Miles

about how he gave indications that he was planning something major. And there were a series of text messages between her and Damien and others that showed an escalating level of threat, I guess you could call it. They were increasingly ominous texts, particularly from Damien, talking about him and Miles and how they weren't going to be taken alive and how they were going to go down together and all of these things. And she testified and said later that she assumed this was just bravado or just bragging or just talking tough. And in Damien's case, she believes that that is all that it was. But in Miles's increasingly twisted reality, this is exactly what he was wanting to do. So, so I, I know this guy that Damien's wife actually called the police the day before

the rampage. And when, when she was speaking last year, this is something that came up that the inquest heard from both her, Sky, and the police about why her call didn't lead to Damien and Miles' arrest, right? Can you tell me about that? She did call the day before when they had taken her vehicle without permission. Right. They had looked around for it. And at that point, as you can imagine, RCMP testified that a call about a stolen vehicle was not a high priority.

That detachment alone gets an estimated 6,000 calls for service every year. In her only interview since the stabbings, Sky told Global News' Ashley Stewart she reported her husband and his brother to police 24 hours before the stabbings took place. I asked her for my safety, and then, so they dispatched the whatever, and then they, you know what Damien possibly might be? I was like, look around, he's there, he's hiding. So, I understand after that call from Sky, police did locate the vehicle near House and James Smith. Yes, they did. At that point, again, they were looking for a stolen vehicle. They were looking for Miles Sanderson because he, he did have an outstanding warrant. They did obtain permission to go in.

They went into the basement and Damien Sanderson gave officers a false name. And at that point RCMP in their database had an outdated photo and they didn't look into it further. At that point, Miles Sanderson, the killer, was actually in that house just minutes earlier, but saw the RCMP coming and ran into the bushes. Again, the response from RCMP was that at this point, we weren't dealing with an imminent, urgent situation. This was a warrant and a stolen vehicle. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

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I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups. So I'll note that Skye Sanderson testified that she told police Damien was definitely inside the house and to go back and check again. And also she informed them that they were using an out-of-date photo. But then another one of the people who testified was Staff Sergeant Robin Zettner, and he laid out how he says Miles Sanderson committed these attacks. So according to police, what was he doing and saying as he went on this rampage? Sure. Well, there were 42 separate crime scenes, 257 witnesses that were interviewed.

This is the largest investigation, criminal investigation in Saskatchewan's history. We spent an entire day on the 48 hours leading up to the attacks in the testimony. And they talked about how Damien and Miles returned to James Smith. And also Vanessa was brought by Miles and forced with him to sell cocaine in the community and then collect on drug debts. And again, this violence that was increasing, this paranoia in his mind that was increasing. And as he was going from house to house to house over more than a dozen locations in those early hours of September 4th, and then circling, he actually circled back to a few of them. He was saying things like, do you know how many bodies I've got? But then other times he was just being very matter of fact, demanding car keys, demanding cigarettes or alcohol.

And we did hear from testimony from others who said that this was not a random act of violence. This was not about how substances that he believed he had a grievance with each and every one of these people or each and every one of these people who is connected to the person that he wanted to do violence against. And again, just staggering how, how much damage was done in such a short period of time. So, so sorry, just to give me a little more sense of what that, I guess, in his twisted logic, what is that logic? Because he was letting some people go, right?

And there was specific targeting of others. Just briefly help me understand, I guess, as best we can, what his logic was. He, as the forensic psychologist and the lead RCMP officer investigator testified that in his brain, these were all grievances they called it criminal psychologist matt logan says sanderson showed many signs of psychopathy he says sanderson may have had fetal alcohol syndrome adhd an intermittent explosive disorder often having and some of them were were reactive for example when when his brother Damien refused to go along with this plan of violence and tried to break it up, that's when Damien was an impediment and needed to be

eliminated. And so that's why Damien they believe was the first killing the others. They believe that he had specific ideas in his mind, whether it was a perceived connection to a gang or an ex-partner who rejected him or many other reasons. A lot of them were not factual or not real, but nevertheless, some he left alone and others became his victims. There were some amid all of this, you know, horror and tragedy, there were also some stories of heroism by some of the folks in the community who were, you know, trying to help stop Sanderson. Can you tell me about those a bit? Yes, definitely. So Earl Burns is one of the people who was held up as one of the heroes of this inquest. Vanessa Burns, the ex-partner of Miles Sanderson and Deborah Burns, her sister, they talked about and the witnesses heard about how he actually saw the attacks at his property and some of his loved ones. And he was actually stabbed and he gave chase in a school bus to try and stop Miles Sanderson, who he correctly believed he was on his way to do more violence.

And so we don't know exactly how it happened, but unfortunately Earl Burns was found deceased on that bus on a grid road. And so we, we heard about his heroism, but then we also heard about others and the, the first RCMP officer to respond, it was again, Tanner Maynard. And he talked about how he walked into one of the homes and he saw someone giving CPR to a woman. And he could see that the woman was clearly dead, had died at this point already, but he encouraged the relative to continue giving CPR.

And he said he knew it was likely futile at that moment, but it was still important. He said, you always want to give the opportunity for family members to say they did everything they could to save the lives of their loved ones. And so amid all of this chaos, some very brave acts. There's been a lot of criticism of the police response. There's one RCMP officer who apparently stopped for fast food on his way. There were a couple of police officers who drove past the school bus that Earl Burns, who you mentioned earlier, was dying in. And then the photo that we sent out wasn't actually of Miles Sanderson. It was a different person with the same name.

So I guess I'm just curious how the, how the police are defending themselves here. You summarized it well. There are quite a number of criticisms or at least questions about how RCMP responded to this. And I'll take a couple of the examples that you mentioned, the, the detachment commander at the time for that detachment, he, he was responding after those two officers to that first, that first

murder scene. And again, he did stop for fast food on the way. And, uh, he testified that at that point, he believed it to be a secure scene of an act of violence that had already been committed. And he believed his officers were there all day and that they would need food. And so he says that in hindsight, if he had known there would be much more than they believed there was at that moment, he would have never, never stopped at that moment. The other concern again, was that Earl Burns, who we just talked about in the school bus was passed by at least four times by RCMP driving along that stretch of grid road. The RCMP testified they did see that school bus,

and it did concern them. It did look out of place, but they had multiple specific complaints of active stabbings that were going on at specific locations and didn't feel that they had time to stop. I was somewhat angry, right, wondering why help didn't get to him sooner. But talking to the actual police officer that attended the scene and seeing his facial expression and hearing his voice and

seeing that he's a human being as well and that he's affected by this too. And so quite a number of criticisms and questions and those are all being interrogated here at the inquest over these three weeks. There was also, you know, I think a more considerable and very understandable sense of outrage that Miles Sanderson wasn't already in prison when these attacks happened. And just to lay it out for folks, Sanderson had 78 convictions between 2004 and 2019. He was given statutory release from prison in 2021, and he was later declared unlawfully at large and was never caught. So what else do you think we might learn about his release and the fact that he wasn't, you know, in custody? That's one of the big questions that's expected to come up in the next week or two as the inquest continues. Many people are wondering why he was let out, the length of sentence that he received, why he had violated his parole but had not been taken back into custody. And so those are all questions that we're expecting to hear

more about in the coming days. As the coroner said, we're, we're over the hump as he put it now with the specific details of, uh, what happened on those days leading up to and including September 4th, a lot of the traumatic details and people involved. And now we're looking at more of the issues, whether it's the parole system and the correction system, whether those worked in this case, whether it's addiction services

in these communities, or whether they're adequate, many different issues. I mean, the overriding rationale here is that we're trying to prevent something like this from happening as much as that's possible. So at the end of this inquest,

six members of its jury are going to make recommendations to exactly that point, you know, helping prevent an attack like this from happening again. Some of the members of the jury are Indigenous, others aren't. What kind of potential action have folks in the community been talking about already? I'm just curious to see where this might be leading. It's just that. They're wanting better addiction services in the community, more supports for mental health and cultural revival, which they say are key to the long-term health of the community. They're talking about policing in First Nations communities, and they've cited several successful examples, some in other parts of Saskatchewan and elsewhere, where it's helped to decrease violence if there's faster

response times when things happen, but also to have a more responsive police service in the community. But there was also testimony that RCMP may be needed, at least for the shorter medium term, to be closer to the community, actually, and more involved in the community until this First Nations police force can be trained adequately and feels comfortable taking over. All right. Jason, thanks so much for spending time talking to us today. I really appreciate it.

You're welcome. All right. That's it for today. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. I'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.