Bank of Montreal police in Saanich, BC, on June 28th. Six officers were injured in the shooting. CHAD HIPOLITO / The Canadian Press
Both Isaac and Mathew Auchterlonie, the 22-year-old brothers obsessed with guns, named as suspects in a failed bank robbery in Saanich, BC, took steps to join the Canadian military, the Department confirmed of National Defense.
But neither reached the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). The two youths were killed a week ago in a shootout with police in front of a Montreal bench.
Six officers were injured, all men and all serving with the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team. Three of the six officers, who are in hospital, suffered fatal injuries.
One was a member of the Victoria Police Department. The other two served in the Saanich police department.
The brothers in a failed robbery at a BC bank had become angry and radical, obsessed with guns and “government tyranny.”
On Tuesday, the Saanich police department said one of its two officers is in stable condition, while the other is still in intensive care after three different operations.
“The injuries are significant,” Saanich police chief Dean Duthie said. “It will be a very long road.”
Mathew applied to join the Canadian Forces, the Department of National Defense said Monday in The Globe and Mail. He was frustrated by an aptitude test that he could not pass.
Citing “privacy,” media spokeswoman Jessica Lamirande said she could not specify when Mathew’s request was made, or when the failure occurred.
The exam is used to determine if applicants have the mental aptitude needed to enlist and what military occupation would suit them best. It has two written sections and a verbal part.
In 2018, Isaac completed the CAF daily soldier program. It is intended to give potential recruits an idea of what a military career entails. They usually occur on a local basis. Vancouver Island has two Canadian Forces bases: CFB Comox on Central Island and CFB Esquimault near Victoria.
Isaac, at least, considered himself an army fan and revered the army, according to his now-closed Instagram page. (Mathew’s social media pages were removed before the brothers were named as suspects on Sunday, friends told The Globe.)
Friends have described Mathew as the more assertive of the two. The Auchterlonie family did not issue a statement or respond to requests for interviews. But people who knew them say the two had been isolated in recent years, and Isaac’s online footprint, in which Mathew frequently appears, represents them increasingly angry, frustrated, and obsessed with violence, the weapons and explosives.
One incident that seems to have particularly fascinated the brothers was an attempted robbery in 1997 at a Bank of America branch in North Hollywood. This 25-year-old crime, still considered one of the most violent shootings in police history, is strangely reminiscent of what happened last week on Vancouver Island. It is not yet known whether the brothers embarked on a suicide mission to mimic the previous crime. The RCMP, which is investigating the erroneous theft, said on Tuesday that no update was planned.
In both Los Angeles and Saanich, two young men entered the benches in black balaclavas and bulletproof vests with body armor tied around their legs. In LA, at least, the men were armed to the teeth and carrying large-caliber assault rifles. (The RCMP will not say what weapons were used on Vancouver Island.)
Shelli Fryer, the only one of 22 people caught during the incident that has been addressed in the media so far, said the brothers, who seemed calm and spoke quietly with the bank manager, were in no hurry to leave. .
In North Hollywood, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Matasareanu managed to lure police to a 44-minute shooting in a Laurel Canyon parking lot that injured 13 people. The two men were shot dead by police.
Former Los Angeles Police Department SWAT officer Rick Massa told CNN that the two “didn’t care about life,” adding that this was evident when they left the bank and started shooting anyone. he didn’t care. “
Later, the mother of Mr. Matasareanu told the Los Angeles Times that he believes his son was on a suicide mission: “He can no longer handle it, those were his words. He told me he wanted to die.”
The RCMP has not said how long the brothers shot at police on the BMO lot, but according to witnesses, it ended in a few minutes.
In another strange coincidence, the Auchterlonie brothers lived an hour and a half by car from two other young men who acted with violent fantasies: Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod. After killing three people in northern BC, the Port Alberni couple, ages 18 and 19, respectively, unleashed one of the largest human hunts in Canadian history.
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