POLICE OR HOME INVADERS?

Fear Of Gang Attack Led To Dealer's Fatal Shooting, Wife Testifies

ABE HIEBERT was convinced his home was being invaded by a street gang
moments before Winnipeg police burst into his kitchen and shot him
dead, an inquest heard yesterday.

Wilma Cameron, Hiebert's wife, testified the 60-year-old drug dealer
armed himself with a baseball bat and pepper spray to fend off what
they both believed was an attack not by police, but by gang members
looking for drugs and money.

Hiebert had been beaten and robbed previously in his small north end
house and had vowed to protect himself if it happened again.

"I believed we were being broken into," she said. "We have three gangs
right in our neighbourhood."

So certain were they that it was a break-in, Cameron tried to summon
police via the house alarm's "panic button." Cameron bought the newly
installed alarm for Hiebert as an early Christmas gift.

The inquest, before Judge Charles Rubin, is examining how a Winnipeg
police drug raid led to Det. Sgt. Leonard Small killing Hiebert.

In dramatic testimony yesterday, the small, elderly Cameron recalled
how she spent the evening wrapping Christmas presents. She then
settled in with Hiebert, who was in ill health, to watch Dallas.

Cameron said that while watching TV, she heard Lady, their pet dog,
scraping her chain on the rear deck. She asked Hiebert to check it
out. He went to the back door, which enters into the kitchen.

Cameron heard voices but couldn't distinguish what they were saying,
so she went to the kitchen. Hiebert told her to get pepper spray from
the living room while he went to get a bat from his bedroom, she testified.

Cameron quickly glanced out the back-door window and saw only the tops
of several people's heads at the side of the rear deck, she said. She
hit the panic button, then headed for the living room. She heard glass
breaking in the door.

She arrived back in the kitchen after only five or six seconds, she
said. Hiebert was sprawled on the floor. "All of a sudden I saw the
battering ram on the floor . . . that was the first time I knew it was
the police," she said.

Simultaneously, a female officer barged into the house, gun drawn.
Cameron was ordered to the floor and handcuffed. She did not learn
Hiebert was dead until more than an hour later at the Public Safety
Building.

Cameron's wrinkled face lit up and she smiled broadly as she recalled
Hiebert, a man she described as both stubborn and caring. "You had to
know Abe," she said with a grin several times.

Cameron testified she never heard the shot fired by Det. Sgt. Leonard
Small that killed Hiebert.

If they had known it was police at the door, she said, they would have
let them in as they had on previous occasions.

By all accounts, Hiebert sold Talwin and Ritalin to hookers and other
street people. Two previous arrests and a beating had not curbed his
activity.

Hiebert was pummelled by three intruders looking for drugs and cash in
the fall of 1996. After that, Cameron said he kept pepper spray and a
bat at hand. He often carried one pepper canister on his person, and
kept a spare near the phone. He also moved the location of the rear
door, and added a steel door.

"He had gotten beaten up and he wasn't going to get beaten up again,"
Cameron said.

Dressed all in black except for white sneakers, Cameron faced tough
questioning about a number of inconsistencies between her testimony
and previous statements she gave police.

Among the inconsistencies, Cameron had claimed to police she merely
rented a room from Hiebert. Small's lawyer, Hymie Weinstein, asked if
she was claiming to be his wife only to get more money from a lawsuit
she has launched against the police. She denied this.

Other testimony showed the pair lived together for all but three years
of the two decades prior to Dec. 16, 1997.

Cameron was also questioned intensely over her claim that Hiebert had
dealt drugs for a lengthy period of time before she realized what was
going on.

The inquest has heard that Hiebert was quite ill. He had had cancer,
suffered liver and bowel trouble and was often short of breath.
Cameron testified he was blind in one eye and hard of hearing.

Moreover, Hiebert was due to plead guilty to drug charges in January
1998. Under a plea bargain, he was to be sentenced to 26 months in
prison, of which he expected to serve between four and six months.

Cameron disputed suggestions that Hiebert's health and looming jail
term made him suicidal.

"He enjoyed life," she said, adding he liked to play VLTs and the
couple enjoyed going out for breakfast.

The inquest has dredged up a number of puzzling questions surrounding
the Hiebert shooting.

Earlier, the inquest heard how five of the eight officers involved in
the raid drank alcohol at a Canada Customs party about five hours
before the fatal raid.

The inquest has also heard that a vice squad member rang the front
doorbell of Hiebert's home at the same time a team of officers was
breaking in the back, raising the possibility he lashed out at
officers in confusion.