When two Ontario Provincial Police officers walked into Alain Bellefeuille’s house, one calling his name and announcing they were police, Bellefeuille never heard it, he testified at his murder trial Thursday.
“If I knew they were police, I would’ve been relieved,” he said in French of the events that took place May 11, 2023 in Bourget, Ont.
“I would’ve been confused, but I wouldn’t have taken them to be a threat.”
Instead he was panicked, he said, and his heartbeat was ringing in his ears. Someone was in his house at 2:30 a.m., he saw they were holding something metallic that looked like a handgun, and he thought he might die.
His response, he said, was to start firing the high-calibre, semi-automatic sport shooting rifle he kept at the foot of his bed in violation of gun safety regulations.
It was a legal firearm he had a valid licence for, but it was equipped with an illegal magazine he’d modified so that it could hold more than 20 rounds instead of the permitted five.
There was nothing he had to do to get the gun ready to fire, Bellefeuille said. The safety was off, and a round was already in the chamber.
He told court he thinks he fired 10 times through his bedroom wall, based on video footage from Sgt. Eric Mueller’s body-worn camera.
Bellefeuille pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder at the outset of his bilingual trial in Superior Court in L’Orignal, Ont., east of Ottawa, in March.
All his testimony is being given in French under questioning by co-defence counsel Biagio Del Greco, also in French.
It’s an admitted fact that Bellefeuille killed Mueller, critically wounded Const. Marc Lauzon and wounded Const. François Gamache-Asselin when he shot at them.
In question is what he was thinking and when, as well as what his intentions were.
It was an emotional day in the courtroom, and Bellefeuille appeared to cry at times. On both sides of the nearly full public gallery, some of his relatives and supporters — as well as those of the OPP officers and their colleagues — were also sometimes in tears.
After Bellefeuille’s first volley of shots, about half a minute passed with no gunfire.
Bellefeuille told court he was hoping the threat was over, but then two shots were fired in his direction. He felt like a sitting duck, he said, and when he saw a light move in the living room, he fired toward it twice.
He saw someone on the floor of the mudroom and moved toward them. Then he saw a light outside, and he thought it was someone armed so he fired at them, he testified.
Then Bellefeuille looked at the person on the ground and realized it was an officer.
“Immediately I’m in shock. I don’t understand what’s happening, the how, the why,” he said in French.
“I was in a nightmare. I thought I was in a home invasion and then I realized I shot a police officer.”
When he crouched over Mueller and said, “You f–ked with the wrong motherf–ker, man … Shoulda never broke into my house. Sorry about that,” Bellefeuille told court he was talking to himself, and that he wasn’t thinking.
Asked what he was sorry about, Bellefeuille said it was “for what happened,” adding that he was in shock.
He said he wanted to disarm Mueller, but when he saw that the officer’s handgun was still in its holster, he left it there. Bellefeuille took off the body-worn camera because he didn’t want to be recorded.
Asked why, he said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure why.”
“What were you feeling?” Del Greco asked in French.
“I’m still in shock and panic. I don’t have control of my emotions at this point,” Bellefuille testified.
He fired more shots outside, he said, because he thought police might keep firing at him and he wanted to buy himself some time to think. He said he fired below a light that appeared to be attached to a vehicle, and that he couldn’t see police insignia on the car because the light was blinding him.
Del Greco asked who Bellefeuille thought was outside, after he’d seen the police insignia on Mueller’s vest.
“It had to be police,” Bellefeuille told court.
He called 911, and he appeared to cry on the stand when audio of paramedics arriving was played. He told the paramedics the officer was still breathing and to hurry up, and he testified that he remembered saying, “Hang in there, buddy,” and “Don’t die, buddy.”
After audio of his dramatic arrest by Const. Ionut Mihuta was played, Bellefeuille testified that he understood the officer’s emotional reaction, adding that he wasn’t in his right mind either.
He said he never wanted to kill anyone, especially a police officer, and that they could have had a family.
Bellefeuille also testified he has nothing against police and was adamant he didn’t know he was shooting at them. Being responsible for Mueller’s death and Lauzon’s serious injuries is a major weight on his heart, he testified, and he would always be affected by it, regardless of the trial’s outcome.
Cross examination by assistant Crown attorney Francois Dulude begins Friday.
Bellefeuille began his testimony Thursday morning, saying he was nervous and anxious to be speaking in front of so many people after his time in custody.
He said his father and uncle were hunters, and that his father and friends had taught him to shoot. He bought the SKS rifle for sports shooting at targets on gun ranges and in the woods, and said the weapon wasn’t allowed for hunting.
By 2023 he’d stopped sports shooting but kept the rifle strictly to protect himself and the house he was renting, he said. He was due to move out of at the end of May that year.
It was a big gun capable of doing a lot of damage and scaring people by making a “big enough bang.”
He bought a linear compensator to help the rifle shoot more accurately at long range. He added after-market rails and a scope with magnification and illuminated cross hairs with adjustable brightness. The scope had no night vision capability.
He had last loaded the gun more than a year earlier, keeping it at the foot of his bed for quick access. Asked by Del Greco if he knew that was against safe storage rules, Bellefeuille said he took the risk because he lived alone, had few visitors and “the danger was very small that anything would happen.”
A friend and his partner had been held at gunpoint, tied to chairs and beaten during a home invasion in Kemptville, Ont., in 2007 or 2008, and it made Bellefeuille think it could happen to him, especially in his rural home. His home and vehicle had been robbed in Gatineau, Que., and in North Gower in rural Ottawa, he said.
He said he modified the magazines for ease of access, if necessary. “In an emergency situation I wouldn’t have time to reload the gun, so that is why 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 motion-activated light for his porch about two or three years before the shooting. In court, he read a Home Depot product listing for a porch light he said looked exactly the same, which could detect motion across 150 degrees and up to nine metres away.
After finishing work at a residence in Orléans on May 10, 2023, Bellefeuille cashed a cheque, went to a hardware store, then went to get gas and 10 to 12 cans of Jack Daniel’s whiskey mixed with soda. Court was shown a photo of his kitchen showing two flat boxes of empty cans of the drink.
After running errands and talking to people at his new residence about his pending move, Bellefeuille drank with a friend and then at home. He consumed about 10 drinks between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. — a normal amount for him, he testified.
He went to bed in his work clothes at about 2 a.m. and fell asleep immediately — also a normal occurrence for him when he drinks and is exhausted, Bellefeuille said. Next came the fatal encounter.
Video from Mueller’s body-worn camera played in court showed Lauzon repeatedly knocking on the back door and window of the house.
Bellefeuille testified that the first thing he heard was his dog barking, followed by what he described as more of a “banging” sound than a knocking. He didn’t hear voices, but saw what looked like a flashlight.
“Immediately I thought it was an intruder who was trying to knock down my back door. It was 2:30 in the morning, nobody announced themselves, nobody warned me or called me,” he said in French.
He did not look outside, he told court.
