More details are coming to light about the twin brothers from Vancouver Island who were killed last week when police say they attempted an armed robbery at a bank in Saanich BC.
Six officers were wounded in the firefight, but Duncan’s brothers Isaac and Mathew Auchterlonie were killed.
Until March 2020, Global News learned that Isaac worked at Canadian Tire in Duncan, where he and Matthew’s apparent love for guns developed.
The brothers worked at Pacific Energy in Duncan until the end of June. The company manufactures wood stoves and gas fireplaces.
“We can confirm that they were employed at our facilities between November 2021 and June 2022,” Pacific Energy’s Cory Iversen said in a statement. “While working with us, they gave no indication of the behavior they were capable of.
“We are fully cooperating with authorities and answering any questions that may help shed light on this tragedy. We would like to thank the brave police officers involved in the senseless violence on June 28. We wish those injured in the line of duty a full and speedy recovery.”
A former classmate of the brothers said they attended Frances Kelsey High School in Mill Bay.
“I knew them in high school as super nice guys who mostly just hung out with each other but had a good group of friends,” Tanner Jacobs told Global News, adding that he had lost touch with them in recent years. .
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‘We huddled under the bush’: Witness describes seeing shots fired outside Saanich BC bank
Police say the 22-year-old brothers were behind last Tuesday’s failed bank robbery in Saanich.
Following a shootout between the brothers and police, three officers from the Saanich Police Department were injured, while three officers from the Victoria Police Department were also injured.
Retired Saanich Police Officer Chris Horsley told Global News that he immediately noticed the similarities between this incident and the 1997 North Hollywood shooting.
“That’s my first thought when I found out how they were dressed,” Horsley said.
“It really is the worst case scenario because those suspects appear to have left and prepared for an armed encounter.”
In 1997, two bank robbers wearing bulletproof vests and wielding assault rifles attempted a heist at the Bank of America in North Hollywood before engaging in a lengthy shootout with police, most of whom were armed only with handguns.
“It was in one of the biggest cities in the United States, but they were able to hold the Los Angeles police for about 45 minutes,” Horsley added.
Both suspects were killed and 18 people, including 11 officers, were injured in the shooting. Horsley said that he changed policing in North America.
“It is the norm now for law enforcement agencies to carry some type of long gun or rifle in their vehicles,” he said.
The subject of the shooting was in a 2021 Instagram post on an account in Isaac’s name. The account has now been deleted.
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6 officers injured in shooting at Saanich, BC bank, 2 suspects killed
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, called the case “puzzling.”
“The raid itself on the bank is quite unnerving and the fact that they show up heavily armed for this type of raid given that you don’t expect resistance inside the bank so if you’re looking for resistance you’re going to be outside the bank ”, he told Global News.
“People would know that these days it’s pretty hard to get away with these kinds of stunts, that the police are pretty receptive. Emergency response teams over the last 20 years have been quite flexible and responsive to threats to public safety.”
Leuprecht said he thinks it didn’t seem like a particularly professional operation, given that most bank robberies are carried out when thieves chase money transports, not the bank itself.
“So that’s what makes me think that if they have social media posts that clearly show some affinities to previous shootings, that’s when they show some affinity for extremists, extremist views, disaffected views toward the government, which is generally translates into contempt for authority and the law. app.”
He added that that may be why the brothers also ended up getting into a firefight because they could have easily given themselves up.
“It is quite possible that the shooting was the intended target of the bank robbery rather than the robbery itself.”
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