When two provincial police officers entered the house of Alain Bellefeuille, one calling for his name and announcing that they were police, Bellefeuille never listened to him, he testified in his trial for murder on Thursday.
“If I knew they were police, I would have relieved me,” he said in French of the events that took place on May 11, 2023 in Bourget, Ontario.
“I would have confused me, but I wouldn’t have taken them as a threat.”
Instead, he was panic, he said, and his beats sounded in his ears. Someone was at home at 2:30 am, he saw that they held something metallic that looked like a gun, and thought he could die.
His response, he said, was to start shooting the high -caliber semi -automatic sports rifle that kept at the foot of his bed in violation of arms security regulations.
It was a legal firearm for which he had a valid license, but was equipped with an illegal magazine that he had modified so that he could contain more than 20 rounds instead of the five allowed.
There was nothing to do to prepare the gun to shoot, said Bellefeuille. Security was off and a round was already in the camera.
He told the Court that he believes he shot 10 times through the wall of his bedroom, according to Sergeant Sergeant. The camera worn by Eric Mueller’s body.
Emotional day in court
Bellefeuille declared himself innocent of first -degree murder and two positions of murder attempt at the beginning of his bilingual trial in the Superior Court in L’Oignal, Ontario, east of Ottawa, in March.
All his testimony is being given in French under interrogations for the co-despair, the lawyer Biagio del Greco, also in French.
It is an admitted fact that Bellefeuille killed Mueller, critically constantly injured. Marc Lauzon and injured const. François Gamache-Asselin when he shot them.
In question is what I was thinking and when, as well as what their intentions were.
It was an emotional day in the courtroom, and Bellefeuille seemed to cry sometimes. On both sides of the almost complete public gallery, some of their relatives and followers, as well as those of the OPP officers and their colleagues, were also crying.
‘I saw that the person on the ground was a police officer’
After the first volley of Bellefeuille shots, he spent approximately half a minute without shots.
Bellefeuille told the Court that he expected the threat to end, but then two shots were shot in his direction. He felt like a sitting duck, he said, and when he saw a light movement in the living room, he shot him twice.
He saw someone on the floor of the frame and moved towards them. Then he saw a light outside, and thought he was someone armed, so he shot them, testified.
Then Bellefeuille looked at the person on the ground and realized that he was an officer.
“I am immediately in shock. I don’t understand what is happening, how, why,” he said in French.
“I was in a nightmare. I thought I was in an invasion of the house and then I realized that I shot a police officer.”
‘I have no control over my emotions’
When he crouched over Mueller and said: “Ke-ke with the wrong pattern, the man, the man … He had never had to break into my house. Sorry for that,” Bellefeuille told the court who was talking to himself and that he was not thinking.
When asked what he lamented, Bellefeuille said it was “for what happened”, and added that he was in shock.
He said he wanted to disarm Mueller, but when he saw that the officer’s gun was still in his case, he left him there. Bellefeuille removed the chamber worn by the body because he did not want to be recorded.
When asked why, he said: “I don’t know. I’m not sure why.”
“What are you feeling?” Del Greco asked in French.
“I’m still shock and panic. I don’t have control of my emotions at this time,” Bellefuille testified.
He shot more shots outside, he said, because he thought the police could continue shooting him and wanted to buy some time to think. He said he shot under a light that seemed to be linked to a vehicle, and that he could not see the police badge in the car because the light was blinding him.
Del Greco asked who thought Bellefeuille was outside, after having seen the police badge in the Mueller vest.
“The police had to be,” Bellefeuille told the Court.
He called 911, and seemed to cry on the pod when the audio of the paramedics was reproduced. He told the paramedics that the officer was still breathing and would rush, and testified that he remembered having said: “Hold on there, friend” and “do not die, friend.”
After the audio of his dramatic arrest by const. Ion Mihuta was played, Bellefeuille testified that he understood the emotional reaction of the officer, and added that he was not in healthy judgment either.
He said he never wanted to kill anyone, especially a police officer, and that they could have had a family.
Bellefeuille also testified that he has nothing against the police and insisted that he did not know that he was shooting them. Being responsible for the death of Mueller and the serious wounds of Lauzon is an important weight in his heart, he testified, and would always be affected by it, regardless of the result of the trial.
The interrogation of the assistant lawyer of the Francois Dulude crown begins on Friday.
Nervous and anxious
Bellefeuille began his testimony on Thursday morning, saying that he was nervous and anxious to speak in front of so many people after his time in custody.
He said that his father and uncle were hunters, and that his father and friends had taught him to shoot. He bought the SKS rifle to shoot sports in the objectives in weapons and in the forest, and said the weapon did not allow to hunt.
By 2023 he had stopped firing sports, but kept the rifle strictly to protect himself and the house he was renting, he said. He had to move at the end of May of that year.
It was a big weapon capable of causing a lot of damage and scaring people making a “blow large enough.”
He bought a linear compensator to help rifle firing with greater long -term precision. He added rails after the market and a scope with increase and transverse hairs illuminated with adjustable brightness. The scope had no night vision capacity.
He made illegal magazines in case of emergency
He had last charged the weapon more than a year earlier, keeping him at the foot of his bed for fast access. When Greco asked him if he knew that he was against the safe storage rules, Bellefeuille said he risked because he lived alone, he had few visitors and “the danger was very small that something would happen.”
A friend and his partner had been arrested at gunpoint, tied to chairs and beaten during an invasion of the house in Kemptville, Ontario, in 2007 or 2008, and made Bellefeuille think he could happen to him, especially in his rural home. His house and vehicle had been stolen in Gatineau, which., And in North Gower in the rural area of Ottawa, he said.
He said he modified magazines to facilitate access, if necessary. “In an emergency situation, I would not have time to recharge the weapon, so I modified the magazine, to have more capacity. I had more than $ 10,000 in cash in my house on May 10, 2023”.
He also testified that he bought a light activated by movement for his porch about two or three years before the shooting. In the Court, he read a list of home depot products for a porch light that, he said, looked exactly the same, which could detect the movement in 150 degrees and up to nine meters away.
The day before shooting
After finishing the work in a residence in Orléans on May 10, 2023, Bellefeuille charged a check, went to a hardware store, then went to obtain gasoline and 10 to 12 cans of Jack Daniel whiskey mixed with soft drinks. The court was shown a photo of his kitchen that shows two flat boxes of empty cans of the drink.
After doing mandados and talking to people in their new residence about their pending movement, Bellefeuille drank with a friend and then at home. He consumed about 10 drinks between 8 pm and 2 am, a normal amount for him, he testified.
He went to bed with his work clothes around 2 in the morning and fell asleep immediately, also a normal occurrence for him when he drinks and is exhausted, said Bellefeuille. Then came the fatal encounter.
The camera video used by Mueller’s body played in the court showed Lauzon repeatedly calling the back door and the house window.
Bellefeuille testified that the first thing he heard was his dog barking, followed by what he described as a more “beaten” sound than a blow. He didn’t hear voices, but he saw what seemed like a flashlight.
“I immediately thought it was an intruder who tried to hit my back door. It was 2:30 in the morning, nobody announced, nobody warned me or called me,” he said in French.
He didn’t look outside, he told the court.
