RCMP Constable Dave Ross and his bride Rachael Vander Ploeg (inset) were a perfect picture of what life should be like. But Ross is now dead, along with two other RCMP officers, in the shooting rampage of a young misfit who was apparently haunted by visions of a Russian invasion of Canada. Justin Bourque, just 24 (lower inset) lived on a potholed, treeless dirt road in a forlorn trailer park in Moncton. He walked purposely southwest on the dead-end street about 7 p.m. Wednesday night, just after he got home from work. “He was staring dead ahead, with a blank deadly stare on his face with no emotions,” witnesses said. He wore army fatigues, a bandana on his head, with a long rifle slung over the left side of his chest, a small gun at his waist, as well as various knives, a water can, and a cross-bow hooked on his right shoulder. The strange sighting and a witnesses phone call to police would trigger the shooting of the officers and a long two day manhunt for Bourque eventually ended when he was found and apprehended without further injury. Now the effort to plumb this isolated man’s psyche begins. Is he yet another young man seeking his destiny through death and destruction? It is a psychiatric phenomenon stretching from Al Qaeda to love-sick teenagers. Time will tell.Bourque haunted by vision of a Russian invasion
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RCMP Constable Dave Ross and his bride Rachael Vander Ploeg (inset) were a perfect picture of what life should be like. But Ross is now dead, along with two other RCMP officers, in the shooting rampage of a young misfit who was apparently haunted by visions of a Russian invasion of Canada. Justin Bourque, just 24 (lower inset) lived on a potholed, treeless dirt road in a forlorn trailer park in Moncton. He walked purposely southwest on the dead-end street about 7 p.m. Wednesday night, just after he got home from work. “He was staring dead ahead, with a blank deadly stare on his face with no emotions,” witnesses said. He wore army fatigues, a bandana on his head, with a long rifle slung over the left side of his chest, a small gun at his waist, as well as various knives, a water can, and a cross-bow hooked on his right shoulder. The strange sighting and a witnesses phone call to police would trigger the shooting of the officers and a long two day manhunt for Bourque eventually ended when he was found and apprehended without further injury. Now the effort to plumb this isolated man’s psyche begins. Is he yet another young man seeking his destiny through death and destruction? It is a psychiatric phenomenon stretching from Al Qaeda to love-sick teenagers. Time will tell.