Gordon Eric Pedersen

Story: 

Tragedy at Peterson Creek Canyon

By C/Supt. John Wesley White.

It’s been some 38 years since the tragic shooting and deaths of the RCMP members Reg. No. 19233, Cst. Elwood Joseph Keck; Reg. No. 20215, Cst. Donald George Weisgerber; and Reg. No. 20865, Cst. Gordon Eric Pedersen.

While there have been many articles published on the shootings, few have gone behind the event and few have been accurate.  As one of the members involved in the incident, I would like to tell my side of this bit of Force history.

Thirty-one-year-old George Booth survived on welfare with his father in a small rough two-room shack at Knutsford (a tiny hamlet then about three miles south of Kamloops, B.C.).  He had experienced mental problems and on one occasion his father had him committed to hospital and by law, he was escorted there by police.  After some months, his father signed him out and, perhaps out of fear, let him believe it was the police who committed him.  During June 1962 there had apparently been some heated discussions between father and son about the reduction of his welfare payments.  None of this background would be known to the Kamloops City Detachment when on the morning of Election Day, June 19 1962, George departed for town with a rifle in a buckskin scabbard.

Csts. Keck and Pedersen were on duty in uniform that morning while Weisgerber in civies, although off duty, was present because of a previous appointment.  Keck answered the phone then turned to those present announcing that “there was a man with a rifle at the Provincial Welfare Office that should be checked.”  The three members then left to attend to the complaint about a half mile south of the office on the fringe of the city adjacent to several provincial buildings including the provincial gaol.

On their arrival, the ensuing actions were followed by many provincial employees watching from windows and, ultimately, by prisoners working in the gaol garden.  When the uniformed members, followed by Weisgerber in civies, tried to approach the unknown man, it was clear he wanted nothing to do with them.  He kept walking away, failing to respond to their talking and frequently looked over his shoulder to keep track of them or occasionally turned and levelled his sheathed rifle.  This continued on a winding route among the buildings with the members slowly trying to narrow their distance without alarming the unknown man.  The pursuit eventually lead onto a rough dirt road toward the Peterson Creek Canyon along a dry creek bed and beside gaol garden.  (The members were now out of contact with no portable radio.)  By now, the man shucked the scabbard from the rifle and displayed it threateningly.

Weisgerber picked it up and tried to persuade him to meet him and retrieve it.  They continued to wend their way separated by about 100 feet when, as the unknown man neared a small wooden bridge over the creek bed, he turned again and found only two members where there had been three.  He then spotted Pedersen well off to the side crouching in the creek bed and it must have been clear to him that the police were trying to corner him.  He promptly raised his rifle and shot at Pedersen, wounding him across the back.  Keck drew his revolver, shot at the man and at the same time ran toward him seeking to get under the bridge as it was the only possible shelter. 

Weisgerber had run to his left behind a large timbered gravel hopper.  Pedersen had also returned a shot and one bullet struck the gunman at belt level on his right side.  It knocked him down momentarily but in the few seconds while Keck was running toward the bridge, he was up in time to shoot straight down at Keck as he reached the bridge below him, then quickly shot again at Pedersen; two members were now dead.

Weisgerber was momentarily safe but unarmed behind the hopper.  He obviously appreciated the predicament and his only help was the car radio some two city blocks behind him.  He ran from the hopper but took only a few steps when he was fatally shot.  As he hit the ground and rolled, he was shot a second time.  The gunman now calmly continued up the dirt road disappearing among trees toward the Canyon.

By now the phones were humming at the city office advising that a policeman had been shot. The first problem for the police was that Keck and Pedersen were the entire response day shift and they had one of the two available cars.  As quickly as possible, the staff sergeant in charge arrived at the scene while leaving instructions to call out every available member.

At that time I was a member of the Sub-Division General Investigation Section.  As I was leaving the Sub-Division Office about 9:30 a.m. on an investigation, the Officer Commanding stepped out of his office and announced he had just been informed that a member of the city detachment had apparently been shot and the gunman had fled into the Petersen Creek Canyon.  I suggested I would take my two partners, also in plain clothes, and go to the top of the Canyon to cut off a continuing south retreat and would he please so advise the city.  I then ran back to the office and hollered at the two men available: Reg. No. 15596, Cpl. Ab Willms and Reg. No. 18791, Cst. J.A. Norm Belanger, to come at once.  As we got into our car, I explained the little I knew and my intended destination.  All agreed but we needed rifles because we carried only snub-nosed revolvers.  The only available issue rifles were .303 Lee-Enfields and new 7.62 FNs at the city sighted (I had experienced them on annual practices) and no one had yet even handled the new rifles.  We opted to take a few extra minutes while Cpl. Willms and I picked up our own hunting rifles and I retrieved mu full-size service revolver for Cst. Belanger. 

The hills at the south of Kamloops City rise about 1,000 feet to where the Petersen Creek Canyon begins and to reach that height we drove ip the Rose Hilt Road then west across the open grasslands until we could go no further because of deep traversing ravines.  We were now also out of touch with no portable radios.  It was a brilliant morning with glaring sun and pitch black shadows among the trees in ravine bottoms.  We kept close track of our time to determine a safe time limit before we could possibly intercept this unknown gunman.

After about an hour of walking west, we decided it was time to become cautious for we knew there had been no capture as by now a rented Bell 47 helicopter was sweeping back and forth along the hillsides ahead of us.  We began to move in a spread triangle, each of us about 150 feet from the other and never more than two of us moving at one time.  Extreme caution was needed in crossing the gullies for we simply could not see into the deep shadows under the pine trees and we had a couple of heart-pounding experiences when we flushed grouse from almost under foot.  As it neared noon, we were just about in our intended position and we could not only see but hear many members far below us working their way directly up the hills toward us.

At this time we were on reasonably flat ground, trees sparsely spread atop the crest of the hills which were thickly treed below us.  It was my turn to anchor our triangle.  I stood some 60 feet from, and facing the crest, while Willms walked behind me to pass and Belanger suddenly began backing away from the crest toward me and had his (my) revolver levelled.  It was apparent he had seen or heard something suspicious.  In that instant, a man appeared at the crest from the knees up (he had stood suddenly) and was shooting at us.

I grew up with guns in the backwoods of Jasper National Park where my father was a warden.  Stern boyhood training at my father’s hand told me to immediately shoot and it would startle him off his aim.  I fired my rifle where it was aimed at the ground, about midway between us, for I knew I did not have that split second to raise it toward him.  His shot was so close with mine that they seemed one and although he was only 60 feet from us he missed is both.  Wither my action saved us or he may have been expecting one target and was confronted with two. 

The next few moments of action seemed as if in slow motion.  The gunman then dove to his right coming to rest behind a two-foot thick pine tree.  I dove to my let and found myself behind a rock the size of a large watermelon (and the only rock in the entire area), while Belanger flattened where he was.  Belanger seemed exposed but was actually in a shallow dip and could not see the gunman while Willms was about 100 feet behind me.  I could see that the gunman was well protected, not only by tree he was lying behind but also his body was down slope from it.  He was so close I could clearly hear the action of the rifle as he worked the bolt to reload and it was time to scrunch behind that small rock for his next shot hit it.  I now had a safe time to look and shot at the dirt to the side of the tree hoping to perhaps hit his elbow bit it was clear there was too much protection of earth in front of him.

Now it was time to duck for I heard his bolt slam home again.  He shot a third time creasing a small tree line with me and a sliver of wood nicked my forehead.  My turn again.  This time I looked, he had rolled onto his left side to reload and exposed the back of his head past the safety of the tree.  I shot and he appeared to dive over backward to my right and out of sight.

I couldn’t believe I could possibly have missed him and we couldn’t afford to lose track of him.  I motioned Belanger to guard the right and to Willms to guard the left while I gingerly stood to advance.  I could then see him lying prone some 10 feet from where he had been.  The impact of the shot had actually lifted him over backward.  Our trading of six shots had caused a flurry of activity far below us and soon the helicopter swept by.  We waved it in and then learned that three of our members had been slain.

As the subsequent investigation began, the previous history was learned for all.  Over the next few years, numerous testy encounters ensued with George Booth’s father and our members, beginning with his insisting on having his son’s bloodied clothing returned to him which he enshrined on the wall of his shack.  He then erected a concrete monument where his son died, carrying concrete and water half a mile to build it with a plaque attesting to his son’s murder at the hands of the police.  Finally, 11 years later, on July 25, 1973, the father shot at a man on the main street of Kamloops with a revolver, hitting the frame of his eye glasses.  He was committed to a mental hospital and died in 1974.  His full name was John Wilkes Booth – Shades of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.