PRELUDE TO DEATH: BAILIFF TELLS OF LEAD-UP TO AMBUSH

RCMP Called To Farm After Efforts To Repossess Pickup Got 'Weird'

EDMONTON -- James Roszko lay in wait inside a metal Quonset hut with a
high-powered, semi-automatic rifle for the four Mounties he gunned down on
his farm Thursday morning, RCMP said Saturday.

"Our officers, all four of them, were shot and killed by James Roszko,"
RCMP Supt. Marty Cheliak said outside the Mayerthorpe detachment, as he
released results of post-mortem examinations.

"James Roszko was hit by return fire by our officers. Those strikes did not
result in his death. James Roszko then took his own life."

But many more questions remain.

Alberta RCMP spokesman Wayne Oakes said investigators don't know how or
when Roszko sneaked back onto his farm and inside the Quonset hut. Two
officers were left to guard the farm overnight, and two other officers
joined them Thursday morning.

As well, in addition to their handguns, the officers had access to 12-gauge
shotguns and .308 calibre rifles, but Oakes didn't know if they were
carrying them.

Nor is it known when the four officers were shot.

It is known that at 9:15 a.m., gunfire erupted in the hut as two members of
the Edmonton RCMP auto theft unit arrived and stepped from their police
car. Roszko ran outside shooting. The auto theft officers returned fire,
and Roszko, wounded, retreated into the hut.

Inside, among the bodies of constables Anthony Gordon, Lionide Johnston,
Brock Myrol and Peter Schiemann, the nation's most savage police killer in
a century killed himself.

As Cheliak speaks, more than 100 kilometres away bailiff Mark Hnatiw tells
the story of what drew the four RCMP officers to the deadly ambush.

Hnatiw's voice breaks and his words slow as he speaks about their deaths. A
massive memorial service will be held Thursday at the Butterdome at the
University of Alberta in Edmonton.

"I'm extremely upset that four members of the RCMP are now dead," he said
over his cellphone. He pauses to compose himself.

"And my heart goes out to their family and friends. It's just a horrible,
horrible thing that has happened.

"I'm the luckiest guy in the world to be able to even talk to you. It could
be me lying there."

Hnatiw had no idea how dangerous Roszko was when he and another bailiff
drove to his farm north of Rochfort Bridge to repossess a 2005 white Ford
F350 pickup on behalf of an Edmonton dealership, Kentwood Ford. If he had,
he would have visited the RCMP detachment in Mayerthorpe before arriving at
his heavily gated property around 3:20 p.m. Wednesday.

There, they might have heard about the 46-year-old's notoriety and the
booby traps on his property. Bailiff Brenda Storm did in 1999, when RCMP
advised her to wear a flak jacket before entering his farm because he had a
long history of assaults, several guns and "would most likely shoot anyone
on the property on sight."

Roszko refused to respond when Hnatiw and a fellow bailiff stopped in a
plain black pickup truck before the gate blocking the main entrance to
Roszko's farm.

Hnatiw said they never had a chance to tell Roszko who they were or why
they were there, but he figures he knew they came for the pickup truck.

Roszko ignored them and walked into his Quonset hut. The bailiff with
Hnatiw honked on the horn.

"The next sighting of him he appeared by his pickup truck by the trailer,"
Hnatiw recalled. "How he got there, I don't know. I didn't observe him
walking across the yard or anything."

That's when Roszko set loose his two Rottweilers. Hnatiw picked up his
cellphone. "We called the police because it was starting to get weird," he
said.

Roszko, a black baseball cap on his head and dressed in blue jeans and a
dark jacket, got into the white Ford F350 and drove south through a gate,
stopping at another.

"We thought we has going to leave that way."

He didn't.

"He backed his truck up and came towards us to the chain-link gates,
stopped, let himself through that chain-link gate and before he got back
into his truck he yelled at us to 'F--- off.' "

Roszko sped off and headed north. About a minute later, RCMP Cpl. James
Martin and Const. Peter Schiemann arrived. Hnatiw said a police car set off
to catch up with Roszko.

"A couple of officers ... tried to head him off, but they missed him,"
Hnatiw said.

"When they came back, they said a couple of gals on horseback said that he
had broken through a fence with the truck, went through the ditch, almost
hitting them."

No one appears to know where Roszko headed from there. Oakes said Saturday
police found his pickup with the help of volunteers from Mayerthorpe's
rural crime watch program. He refused, though, to reveal the location of
the truck.

Twenty-five minutes after Hnatiw and a fellow bailiff arrived at Roszko's
farm Wednesday, they cut the lock on the farm gate and stepped onto the
property with Martin and Schiemann. Hnatiw said police pepper sprayed the
Rottweilers to subdue them.

Once inside the Quonset hut, Martin saw two partially dismantled pickup
trucks, a quad recreation vehicle, pieces of a motorcycle, tools and a
generator. He smelled marijuana. The plants were in a wooden shed in the
southwest corner of the hut.

In a search warrant, police mention about 20 mature marijuana plants
growing in pots. A bulletin sent to Edmonton police on the day of the
shooting said 280 plants were seized and $8,000 worth of growing equipment.
It noted that the stolen generator was worth $30,000.

When the officers and bailiffs left the hut they had to subdue the dogs
again. By then, Const. Julie Letal had arrived.

"Const. Julie Letal and myself rounded up the dogs in her cruiser and
pepper sprayed them," Hnatiw said. "They retreated into the granary."

To block the opening, Letal pinned the dog house against the granary with
her cruiser.

The bailiffs left around 6:30 p.m. They taped their seizure notice to the
door of Roszko's trailer before taking off.

"We were hoping that this fellow was going to have a change of heart,
return and come to his senses and just turn over the truck and we'd be
gone, which is often the case," Hnatiw said. "A lot of people ... do panic
and run away and then they have second thoughts. They realize it's just a
vehicle and they just turn it in.

"This is just such an unusual event. I as a bailiff had no knowledge of the
violence of the man."

Letal also left. Before she did, she offered a word of warning about Roszko.

"When I went, I told the boys to make sure everything's clear, because he's
watching us."

Officers with the joint Edmonton-RCMP Green Team left around 4:30 a.m. The
vehicle theft investigation was planned for Thursday morning.

At some point, Roszko returned to kill.

Cheliak said every precaution was taken during the operation at Roszko's
farm, including extra weapons.

"Every detail in the search warrant was known to investigators and was
utilized to develop an operational response," he said.

"Officers guarding the scene were in regular contact with other officers
and supervisors."

Hnatiw hasn't stopped working since the rampage.

"I am super cautious almost to the point of paranoia," said the former
prison guard who stands six-foot-four and weighs 240 pounds. "I've had
threats against my life. I've had my personal property and my home damaged,
and I have a wife and children to think of, their safety.

"After this, I'm really having second thoughts with staying in this industry."