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Some people may question whether or not this is about police brutality. There is a pattern here though to observe.
The thing that always gets me is the way the police issue a command and because the person, usually described as disturbed, doesn't obey, they shoot them. Now really is this realistic of human behaviour to expect this disturbed, upset, freaking out person to just stop and say yes sir because a cop gives an order. The fact of the matter is that a lot of people are afraid of the police and when they are flipped out they will react even worse out of that fear. The whole thing is such a scenario that the cops keep playing out.
You'd think with all their technological devices, they could come up with a way of disabling people without killing them or to find some peaceful people who really could negotiate with someone who is flipped out. But what do I know, I'm not a cop.
And another thing, it bothers me how these guys who flip out are so often described as mr. nice guy, real good neighbour, everyone is shocked that there's a time bomb ticking in their orderly little community. This is not to mention the other kind of scenario a few weeks ago where the guy and his wife and friends seemed to be always fighting. They were fighting when the police were called. The wife of the guy who got shot (and lived) was charged with assaulting police. Picture it or maybe you don't want to......
_______________from the Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, October 5, 2000
Don Campbell and Aaron Sands, with files from Jennifer Campbell
An enraged husband armed with knives repeatedly stabbed his wife -- a prominent area feminist -- and two elderly neighbours who tried to stop him before police shot him dead in front of his family's Stittsville bungalow early yesterday.
At about 8:45 a.m., as children walking to school looked on, Sally McIntyre, 34, ran from her Cordukes Street home, screaming and bleeding profusely from several stab wounds as her husband, 35-year-old Frank Hutterer, chased her, waving knives and chanting repeatedly in a high-pitched, child-like voice: "You are dead! You are dead!"
Ms. McIntyre, the former Eastern Ontario representative for the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, ran for her life as she darted across the street toward the home of her neighbours, Mitch Smith, 71, and his wife Margaret.
As the two seniors tried to rescue the critically injured woman, Mr. Hutterer turned his knives, one in each hand, on them.
Neighbour Bruce Burnette also heard the noise and raced across his front yard to intervene. He pleaded, "Frank, Frank, come back" while shouting back to his wife, Elaine, to call 911.
Mr. Hutterer, a stay-at-home father, didn't listen. Instead he he caught up with his wife and continued the bloody assault at the foot of their neighbours' driveway.
Watching in horror, the Smiths risked their own lives as they tried to pull Ms. McIntyre to safety, only to be slashed and stabbed as "the most congenial man in the neighbourhood" continued his attack.
Mr. Smith, 71, suffered serious stab wounds as he tried to calm Mr. Hutterer -- a friend who frequently borrowed his snowblower in the winter months.
In the original call to police, Mr. Hutterer was said to be armed with knives and power tools.
However, as police arrived, Mr. Hutterer stood near the edge of the driveway holding two knives. Police ordered him to drop them.Witnesses said Mr. Hutterer then lunged at a female officer with the knives. She fired a single shot from her handgun, but it had little effect. There was more yelling and more pleading.
Then neighbours heard three more gunshots in rapid succession and Mr. Hutterer dropped dead on the pavement at the foot of the Smiths' driveway. Now safe, paramedics moved in quickly to treat the injured.
Ms. McIntyre was taken to the Ottawa Hospital's Civic campus, where she was upgraded to serious from critical condition last night.
Mr. Smith was also taken to the Civic with serious injuries. Mrs. Smith was treated for minor defensive wounds to her hands.
Both were released from hospital and back at home last night.
"I'm still not over it," Mr. Smith said. "I've had so many conversations with the police already today and I just can't go over it again. It's been a very long day."
Mr. Hutterer's brother, Brian Hutterer, was at a loss for words shortly after being notified of his brother's death and what led to it.
"It's really bad right now," Brian Hutterer said from his home in Alliston, Ont. "He was a really great guy. I don't know what the heck happened."
In the aftermath, longtime residents stood in the cold drizzle, some clad only in housecoats, and wondered aloud what could have gone wrong.
Their main concern was the fate of Mr. Hutterer's and Ms. McIntyre's only child, a 7-year-old son named Benjamin who is hearing impaired.
Up until the 20-minute violent spree, they knew their neighbour only as a warm-hearted and polite family man. They had watched the unemployed carpenter spend much of his idle time restoring what had been a run-down bungalow, in need of work, when he and his wife bought it about five years ago.
Neighbours said the man would go out of his way to say hello, be it as he worked in his yard, as he walked hand-in-hand with his son to the mailbox down the street, or as he drove by.
"Of all the people in the neighbourhood, he would have to be the last one you would ever think could do something like this," said Ian Colpitts, a golfing partner of Mr. Smith who has lived in the same house for the last 41 years. "He was just so congenial. I can't believe it."
Mr. Colpitts said Mr. Hutterer told him he went on disability after having surgery on his brain about four years ago.
Moments before he heard the gunshots, Mr. Colpitts was roused from bed by a repeated, high-pitched chant. "I thought it was one of the school girls outside," he said. "It sounded like a child. But it just kept going and going. And then I heard one gunshot. And then there were three more."
Part of the deadly melee was witnessed by at least three children as they walked to A. Lorne Cassidy Elementary School on nearby Hobin Street.
Eleven-year-old Samantha Irvin was among that small group. When she reached school she placed a frantic call to her father, David, who raced first to the school and then home to see what had happened first-hand.
"She's atschool and just a wreck. They're all in the library crying and I didn't know whether it was best to leave her with her friends or bring her home," said Mr. Irvin, who moved to the area only a month ago.
"She told me she saw a guy in a white shirt with blood all over the front. She said she heard a bunch of shots and there was more blood and the man fell to the ground. Right now, I'm speechless. I can't believe this is happening."
The body lay on the road for several hours as police waited for the province's police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, to arrive at the scene.The couple's son, Benjamin, was in the care of a close relative last night.
Colleagues at the environmental engineering firm R.V. Anderson, where Ms. McIntyre works, were struggling with the news.
"She's a stellar performer and a wonderful person," said Alan Perks, manager of the firm's Ottawa office. "There is nobody more highly regarded in this firm than Sally McIntyre. She is a woman of the highest integrity. What has happened hasn't even started to sink in yet."
Ms. McIntyre joined the firm, which has about 200 employees in Ontario and the Maritimes, about eight years ago and worked her way up to the position of senior environmental planner. She worked recently on infrastructure projects in India and Eastern Europe.
As a member of National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Ms. McIntyre has frequently spoken out against and written on violence against women.
Joanne Laucius, Lynn Ball, The Ottawa Citizen
(photo caption) A police officer covers up what appears to be a knife
following yesterday's fatal shooting of a knife-wielding man on Cordukes
Street in Stittsville. The body of Frank Hutterer is covered by a yellow
tarp behind the officer.
About six years ago, Sally McIntyre attacked the issue of violence against women -- as she attacked many issues --with her pen and a firm grasp of statistics.
More than 300 women had been killed by their intimate partners in the five years after 14 female engineering students were massacred in Montreal, said Ms. McIntyre, who was then the Eastern Ontario representative for the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.
Yesterday, Ms. McIntyre, 34, became a victim of violence herself.
The environmental consultant, known for her firm and professional demeanour, ran screaming and bloody from her Stittsville bungalow, followed by her husband, Frank Hutterer, 35. Mr. Hutterer was gunned down by police soon after. Ms. McIntyre was in stable condition in hospital last night.
Ms. McIntyre has been a passionate advocate on issues ranging from special education to the barriers facing female entrepreneurs. She once reflected that she was five when the National Action Committee was formed in 1971, and her mother, a secretary who eventually became a bank manager, had already spent decades overcoming the systemic discrimination against women.
"We have both been the beneficiaries of the words and actions of NAC," observed Ms. McIntyre.
Ms. McIntyre's son, Benjamin, 7, is partially deaf and has other learning disabilities. Ms. McIntyre has lobbied for retaining classroom support in the face of education funding cuts.
Last year, she was part of a group that surveyed west-end schools to gather information on school resources, and what might happen to students if programs were cut.
"She is very outspoken and well-informed. And prepared to do something about a situation she knows is wrong," said Eileen Inrig, who is also an advocate of special education in schools. "She's a very capable woman."
Ms. McIntyre has been a prolific writer of essays and letters to the editor, often employing humour with a bite.
She has attacked the Citizen's decision to drop Overboard, one of her favourite comic strips. "I miss my insubordinate and slimy shipmates," she wrote.
She noticed an advertisement attempting to lure workers to Florida and noted that a hot chocolate after a skate on the Canal was better than watching your Camaro float down the avenue during the annual hurricane season.
She also mused about deeper issues.
"I don't know if there is or isn't a God. But I do know that humans are better off for many of the religious teachings our forebears instilled in us," she recently wrote to CBC radio's Cross Country Check-Up.
In 1994, she chided the press for its coverage of a brief NAC sit-in in front of Reform leader Preston Manning's Parliament Hill office.
"This is an example of how a 30-second sound bite is created. This is how Canadians are informed, and the basis upon which they make decisions."
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law.
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This page created October 6, 2000
