Politic?

The Unexpected

They usually are 'nice guys'. Those whom society might never anticipate would turn out to be starkly otherwise. People who are sought and then arrested on suspicion of having committed dreadful criminal acts are often cited by those who have been taken by surprise by the reality that the nice, normal person they have long been acquainted with, behaved in a manner that was decidedly not nice, and utterly abnormal.

"When the police came in about ten minutes, they ended up busting down the door [of the ATM room] and pulling out all the bodies that were in there. Another couple of moments after that [they] pulled the man who was still alive out of the room."

According to a friend, Travis Brandon Baumgartner was excited about the work he had with the armoured car company. He hoped it would lead to a job at some future date as a police officer. And yes, his friend was amazed at what this young man has been accused of doing. The Travis Baumgarnter he knew was 'nice'.

Most university campuses, like the University of Alberta, have volunteer groups of university students going out on nightly patrols, and offering to help accompany other students to various points of the campus, to ensure safety. Crime is loathe to commit when there are witnesses, and the more people there are around, the less likely it is that anti-social acts will be committed.

No one likes to have witnesses around when they commit themselves to doing things that their mother would be ashamed of. The only witnesses that were present when Travis Baumgartner decided to use his weapon on his colleagues were the unfortunate colleagues themselves. One of whom had been employees of the G4S Security company for far longer than him; others new recruits.

For reasons of his own, this young man of 21 whom the armoured car company had been training for three months in the use of a firearm, decided he would do otherwise than was expected of him. He killed the woman who was a senior employee of four years' standing, who was training the four others present. She was just recently married and now she is dead, along with two others.

One of the G4S Security guards was not killed outright, but lay screaming in agony for help, behind the locked, impenetrable door of the area that held the TD Canada Trust ATM machines they were in the process of filling with cash. "He was screaming, he was moaning, he was groaning - it just didn't sound good", said one witness on the campus of University of Alberta.

It took some while for the police to batter down the locked door. They had been alerted by a volunteer with University of Alberta Safewalk who had been on a round with others at the campus HUB; student residences and shops, about a city block-worth of area. She had peered through the window of the room where the security guards were locked in; two dead, one in agony. Another lay outside the room, dead.

After making good use of a battering ram and an axe the door was opened and paramedics were allowed to enter, to do what they could for the victims. But the assailant had long since left the scene, driving a dark-blue Ford F-150 truck on which he had appended his mother's license plates from her vehicle. Police alerted the Canada Border Services Agency and U.S. customs.

And it was U.S. customs at the Aldergrove/Lynden border crossing southwest of Abbotsford, B.C. that apprehended the man driving that truck as an escaped fugitive and alerted police. Travis Baumgartner is charged with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Michelle Shegelski 26, Brian Ilesic 35, and Eddie Rejani, 39. Charged as well with attempted murder of guard Matthew Schuman, in critical condition in hospital.

"I'm sorry that we had an argument (Thursday) night and had bad words between us. But I want you to come home and do the right thing. Let's work this out together", his mother appealed to her son through police, before he was identified at the U.S. border, with a backpack holding $330,000 cash.