Joanna Smith, Ottawa (Toronto Star) – In the aftermath of a chilling, apparently random act of violence, an Ottawa police officer and father of four is dead and a suspended Mountie with a troubled past has been charged with first-degree murder.
Kevin Gregson, 43, was tackled by paramedics outside an Ottawa hospital several hours before dawn Tuesday after Const. Ireneusz (Eric) Czapnik, 51, was ambushed and fatally stabbed as he jotted down notes on an unrelated case.
It’s believed there is no connection between Czapnik and Gregson.
“I think someone was hell-bent on something occurring and made sure that it happened,” a tired-looking Ottawa Police Chief Vern White told a news conference at police headquarters, where a framed portrait sat on a table of a uniformed Czapnik holding his cap in his white-gloved hands.
“It cost us a very good officer and father as well.”
Gregson was charged late Tuesday night with first-degree murder, robbery and using an imitation firearm to commit a crime. Ottawa police said he would appear in court Wednesday.
Gregson was conditionally discharged – without a criminal record – after pleading guilty to pulling a knife on a Mormon church official while off duty from his job as an RCMP officer in Regina in 2006.
“You don’t know how many ways I have been taught to kill a man,” Gregson told the official, according to a report of the court hearing.
At the time, Gregson had been with the RCMP for nine years. Cysts were discovered in his brain several months after the incident took place and he has since had brain surgery.
“The medical condition played a large role – the actual medical condition itself, but also the delay in getting it properly diagnosed and the delays in our systems in getting in for MRIs and the follow-ups,” his then-lawyer David Bishop told the CBC following the sentencing in April 2007. Gregson’s status with the RCMP was then under review as a result of the incident.
The RCMP did not return calls from the Star Tuesday. Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said the RCMP has offered to assist Ottawa police in the investigation.
“We were … saddened and disappointed to learn the individual arrested in Constable Czapnik’s murder is a suspended member of the RCMP,” Van Loan said in a statement.
Gregson’s lawyer, Israel Gencher, said he spoke to his client by phone briefly early Tuesday morning.
The alleged ambush took place around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday as Czapnik sat in his cruiser outside the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital writing up notes on an unrelated case.
Paramedics on the scene, where two ambulances sat kitty corner from the cruiser in a small parking area, were unable to save the officer, although they and several members of the public managed to apprehend the suspect.
White praised the actions of the four paramedics. “Without their assistance I’m not sure what would have happened next,” White said. “They were essential and I will say they were heroic in the way they handled the situation.”
Czapnik nonetheless died about an hour later.
Czapnik joined the force in April 2007 after working at an office interior store in Ottawa for 16 years. White said Czapnik was probably the oldest and one of the most unlikely recruits the police service has ever had, but was probably drawn to the job because of his family history.
“He was an engaged and dedicated police officer who truly enjoyed working in the community,” his family, which includes a wife, three sons and a daughter, said in a statement read by White. “He was a proud officer following in the footsteps of his father who was also an officer for over 30 years in Poland.”
The Star reached his wife by telephone at the family home but she did not want to talk.
Czapnik was born in Warsaw in 1958, did a mandatory year of service with the Polish army at 19, and then worked as an aircraft mechanic for seven years.
He immigrated to Canada in 1990 after having lived in Greece for two years.
White said Czapnik’s colleagues remember him as a friendly man with a strong accent who managed to achieve the dream of many newcomers to Canada.
“That is probably the immigrant story everyone is looking for and that is what makes this country so great,” White said of Czapnik, who was an active volunteer with the Polish Community Association and played soccer in a local league.
White said the Ottawa police force was shaken by the news.
The last time one of its officers was killed in the line of duty was in October 1983 when 38-year-old Const. David Utman was shot to death during an altercation at a shopping centre.
“It’s always challenging. It’s unexpected. It’s tragic. There’s no rationale. There’s no reason for this, so yeah, it’s difficult,” said White. “I’ve received hundreds of emails today, not only from partners in what we do, but also from the community, and it shows the great relationship we have and it is challenging when that relationship is broken.”
Police cruisers were still guarding the bloody scene cordoned off with yellow tape Tuesday afternoon.
The pages of an abandoned police notepad fluttered in the biting wind on the ground beside what appeared to be the cruiser Czapnik had been sitting in outside an emergency room entrance of the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital.
There was a puddle of blood on the ice, as well as a handgun, two knives and a flashlight.
An empty silver-grey four-door Honda Civic guarded by another cruiser idled its engine for hours. White said there was no known connection between the victim and the man in police custody.
In Regina, the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church referred calls to the media office at church headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for the church, said she could not comment on whether Gregson remains a member of the church.
“Our hearts and prayers go out to Const. Eric Czapnik’s family as they deal with this senseless tragedy,” said Farah.
The Sault Star reported that Gregson is a graduate of the Sault College native addictions counselling program and worked as an orderly at Riverview Mental Health Centre in Sault Ste. Marie after his 2007 conviction.
Mario Paluzzi, spokesman for Sault Area Hospital, said Tuesday he could not speak about what connections Gregson had to the centre.
“Our practice is we do not speak or confirm current or past employees,” said Paluzzi.
White said members of the public can send messages of condolence by email to info@ottawapolice.ca.
Accused man a decorated Mountie
DONNA CASEY, Ottawa Sun
Published: Dec 29, 2009
Nearly 10 years ago on a Saskatchewan First Nations reserve, a young RCMP constable walked toward a distraught man brandishing a rifle outside his home.
The man wanted the officer, Const. Kevin Gregson, to end his misery.
“I want you to kill me, I want to die,” the man told the then 33-year-old Mountie.
The rookie cop spent the next 45 minutes talking down the suicidal man, actions that later earned him a bravery commendation from the province.
On Tuesday morning, with bitter winds howling across the entrance of Ottawa Hospital’s Civic campus, a man walked up to the window of an Ottawa police cruiser and stabbed a rookie officer in the neck as he wrote up some notes.
Today, Const. Eric Czapnik is dead, and Const. Kevin Gregson, the decorated police hero, is behind bars facing charges in his slaying.
Ottawa’s first killing of a police officer in 26 years has shocked the city and left Czapnik’s colleagues reeling.
“It’s like a family, a brotherhood and to know that it’s one of our own who perpetrated this makes it tough,” said a police colleague of Czapnik, who didn’t want to be identified.
In a brief interview Tuesday morning, Gregson’s mother said that when she spoke to her son after his arrest, she heard “not good things.”
When contacted in Edmonton, Gregson’s brother Hlynn Gregson didn’t know about his brother’s arrest.
“This is a shock and I don’t want to say any more until I know what’s going on,” he said.
In 2006, Gregson found himself on the other side of the law when he was charged after pulling a knife on a Mormon church official in Regina.
Court heard in 2007 that Gregson sat down with Robert Howie, a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to talk about his temple privileges, which had previously been revoked.
An angry and upset Gregson pulled out a knife and placed it on the desk, with the blade pointing to Howie.
“You don’t know how many ways I’ve been taught to kill,” Gregson said.
Court heard how Howie talked the distraught Gregson down, with the Mountie telling him “I’m messed up. No one knows how messed up I am.”
On April 3, 2007, Gregson pleaded guilty to uttering a death threat and a provincial court judge handed him a conditional discharge and placed him on probation for 18 months.
Following the incident, Gregson was diagnosed with cysts in his brain and underwent surgery.
At the time of his sentencing, Gregson was on paid leave from the RCMP.
Gregson graduated from the RCMP training facility in Regina in 1998 and spent the first few years of his police career at the detachment of Pelly, Sask., a village of about 300 people.
The officer’s encounter with the armed and suicidal man on Feb. 12, 2000, took place on the nearby Keeseekoose First Nation.
Gregson and his partner were responding to reports of shots fired in a home.
Gregson told the Sault Star that “we were trained technically to draw our weapons but I didn’t feel I should because he was so volatile.”
Gregson told his partner to stay back while he went forward to confront the armed man, who told him he wanted the officer to kill him.
“I told him, no, that’s not going to happen,” Gregson told the Star, eventually convincing the man to go back into the house and hand over his rifle.
Gregson, who grew up in Ottawa, said he considered himself an “urban native.”
He was originally a nursing student in Sault Ste. Marie and an orderly at a local mental health hospital. He switched to the native addictions program to prepare for a career in law enforcement.