By Patrick White
The Globe and Mail
HAY RIVER, Canada — The RCMP constable who was fatally shot in Hay River early Saturday morning may have lain dying for nearly an hour without backup while a dispatcher based 400 kilometres away tried in vain to radio him, according to neighbours in the tight-knit community.
One Hay River resident, who was monitoring his police scanner around 5 a.m. on Saturday, said he heard a Yellowknife dispatcher repeatedly hail Constable Christopher John Worden for around 45 minutes, not knowing the officer had been fatally shot.
“The dispatcher was saying, ‘Please respond, please respond,’ ” Glenn Larsen said. “She went on and on and on that way for 45 minutes before she called for backup. I was thinking, ‘Give it a rest, lady, the officer is probably napping or something.’ ”
Several neighbours in the area where Constable Worden, 30, was fatally shot said sirens responded about an hour after they heard three or four gunshots.
While RCMP Sergeant Larry O’Brien would not comment on the time lapse between the shooting and the arrival of backup, he did say that officers working calls alone usually put themselves on a timer with dispatchers. If the officer doesn’t make radio contact for a specified time, the dispatcher knows to call for backup.
Sgt. O’Brien couldn’t say whether Constable Worden was on a timer the morning he died.
Late Sunday night, the RCMP charged 23-year-old Emrah Bulatci with Constable Worden’s murder. They suspect Mr. Bulatci fled the scene in a grey 2004 Ford Expedition, with the licence plate LEC 010, slipping out of town before police could set up roadblocks north to Yellowknife and south toward Edmonton.
Police throughout Western Canada are on the lookout for Mr. Bulatci, who they consider armed and dangerous. RCMP say he may also be known as Justin Elise, and his last known addresses include locations in the Edmonton area.
Mr. Bulatci was arrested during a drug bust in Edmonton last February, but released after posting $20,000 bail, the Edmonton Sun reported.
Two neighbours said they had seen Mr. Bulatci in town that night accompanied by two other men.
Constable Worden had been responding to a call in a notorious stretch of town termed Disneyland by locals for its late-night parties, drinking and drugs. Mounties who later arrived on the scene eventually found Constable Worden next to a spruce tree outside the Singles, a nearby apartment complex. Constable Worden, who received the unspecified early-morning call while he was off duty but on call, would have known the neighbourhood well.
Just two weeks ago, several residents of the Disneyland houses called police after witnessing a 15-person brawl break out on the street outside their homes.
“They were swinging at each other with sticks, golf clubs, bats — all sorts of stuff,” said Tatelena Dow, who lives in Disneyland but has been pressing the housing authority to place her elsewhere. “I have two kids and I don’t even let them outside any more. If they can kill a cop, they won’t hesitate to kill anyone else.”
A call to the Hay River Housing Authority, which operates the subsidized Disneyland housing, was not returned.
Neighbours have long suspected that the address where Constable Worden parked his police cruiser that morning was a crack-cocaine den.
“There were always Edmonton kids there acting tough,” said neighbour Scott Provincial. “It was no secret that there was crack there. There’s a lot of crack all over town these days.”
A teenager who answered the door at the home yesterday said she had heard the shots but knew nothing else about the slaying. Police took away one of the teenagers at the residence yesterday afternoon.
During the summer, Constable Worden investigated the severe beating of a Hay River man who had been walking through Disneyland in the early morning hours.
“He definitely knew what he was getting into the other night,” said Margaret MacLennan, the mother of the man who was beaten. “He’d been keeping his eye on the area. That’s why I can’t understand why he came alone.”
Constable Worden’s wife, Jodie, tearfully read a statement outside the couple’s home.
“As a husband and father, Chris is irreplaceable,” she said, flanked by her mother, father and eight-month-old daughter, Alexis. “While we are still in shock and disbelief that he is no longer with us, it gives us strength to know we have the support of a nation that recognizes and appreciates the ultimate sacrifice that Chris and other men and women have made for them.”
The accused’s father, Erdogan Bulatci, is also trying to make sense of what has happened.
He said he can’t believe that his son is wanted by police in Constable Worden’s death.
“I don’t believe it,” Mr. Bulatci told The Canadian Press. “He has a baby, why is he going to do a thing like that? I don’t think he would do such a thing.”
The father said he hasn’t talked with or seen his son for more than a year. Emrah Bulatci has blond hair, blue eyes, weighs about 135 pounds and is about five feet tall.
Copyright 2007 The Globe and Mail