On Saturday night, a 51-year-old man opened fire on innocent civilians in a small town in the Province of Nova Scotia, Canada. As of today, there are 22 victims from the ordeal, making this the worse mass shooting for Canada in recent history. The motive is still unknown, and citizens and officials are wondering if the situation could’ve been handled better.

The 51-year-old man dressed as a police officer and rode in a fake police car began burning down residencies in the small town of Portapique in Nova Scotia, Canada. After his first attacks, he also began to gun down people he stopped at the side of the road. At first the attacks seemed to be on people that he knew, by the time he got on the streets his pattern became erratic and random and he began killing anyone that crossed his path.

As he continued on his rampage he killed and injured multiple people, and also led the police on a manhunt for several hours. The police department is saying that one of the things that made it extremely difficult to find him was the fact that he was in a police uniform and car that was basically identical to the ones currently in use by the officers. However, it is worth noting that later in the night he had to get rid of the police car since he got into a traffic accident. After that accident, he stole a civilians car and continued to attempt a getaway. Eventually, Sunday afternoon they found him in a town about 60 miles away from where the rampage started, where the suspect died in a firefight with officers.

While everyone is saddened by all the casualties and trying to focus on getting justice for the families, many people are also wondering why it took so long for the police to notify the public of what was happening. On that Saturday night, many people didn’t know what was going on, and according to BBC News, an emergency alert for the people in the area wasn’t sent out until the following morning at 10 AM. While the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), is stating that they believe they did everything possible to limit the casualties, the public as a whole is stunned at the lack of civilian notice that was given. Although there were some tweets going out that night from the RCMP warning people to stay home in that area, many of those warnings weren’t even seen by the general public, due to a lack of followers of the account. People are questioning why they didn’t just send out these warnings through the emergency alert system, but the Nova Scotia RCMP Chief Superintendent Chris Leather said that the force felt, “[Twitter] was the superior way to communicate,” but then added that, “the force would look into the matter regardless.”

The investigation is still currently ongoing, and no motive for the rampage has been released. We will update this story as more information comes out, and from the OCSA Ledger staff, we express our deepest condolences to all the people affected by this tragedy.