For the past year, Victoria police Staff Sgt. John Musicco has been thinking non-stop about his decision to risk the lives of his emergency response team to rescue hostages from a Shelbourne Street bank on the morning of June 28, 2022.
Musicco, leader of the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team, and six of his tactical officers were pulled from a high-risk arrest in downtown Victoria that morning and dispatched to a bank robbery and hostage-taking by two armed gunmen wearing body armour and balaclavas.
Musicco switched his radio over to the main Saanich channel and listened to the broadcast of the bank robbery in progress.
“I’ve been on this job for almost 20 years and you can hear it in people’s voices. This is serious,” Musicco recalled in an interview on the Victoria police union’s True Blue podcast.
One year after the bank robbery and shootout, the series, produced by retired Staff Sgt. Matt Waterman, is taking an in-depth look at the events of that day, which left the two young gunmen dead and six officers injured by gunfire.
“There was a lot of attention to it at the beginning and then I feel like it was forgotten,” said Waterman. “These officers have been through so much in the last year and this is a really good opportunity to tell more about the story.”
It’s the first time the public has heard a detailed, first-hand account of what happened that day.
Musicco said it took seven minutes to drive to the bank and 60 seconds to put together a plan.
He drove slowly by the Bank of Montreal so the team could see the physical location of the bank. To prevent getting caught in any crossfire, he let patrol officers who were already at the scene know his team had arrived in an unmarked van.
“When I hear that the two armed suspects have exited the bank, that’s my opportunity to launch a rescue of the hostages,” said Musicco. “I did not want those two gunmen to go back into the bank. I made a decision that risked the lives of my team members to prevent that from happening.”
Musicco pulled into the lot. Only a small pane of glass separated him from two men wearing head-to-toe body armour and carrying SKS semi-automatic rifles. Musicco fired his gun out the window. With the crack of his pistol, he lost his hearing.
“I can see one of the gunmen firing. I can see the smoke coming from his rifle and a casing coming out of the rifle.”
Musicco said he turned his brain off to let his training take over.
“I usually don’t have a ton of emotion in these incidents but I had a little bit of anger starting to creep in, in a sense that I felt my gun was working too slow,” Musicco told Waterman.
“I wasn’t getting the desired effect. Well, these guys are wearing body armour. I’m not seeing the results that I want, which is to stop them shooting at us. I just remember staring at my pistol and wondering if I could push the slide to work faster.”
Later, Const. Mike Jarosz, the only ERT member not injured that day, told Musicco that when he came out of the van and saw the shot-out front windshield and casings everywhere, he thought Musicco, the driver, was dead.
“These are powerful experiences,” said Musicco, taking a deep breath. “I’m lucky to be alive and lucky to be here to tell the story and learn from it and make our community and policing better in the process.”
Victoria police Const. Ben King is also interviewed in an episode of the True Blue podcast. The former ERT member said he remembers the weird feeling he had when the call came over the radio.
“When we pulled into the parking lot, the van door slid open and I saw one of the robbers turn around with an SKS rifle and in my brain it was like ‘oh [expletive]’ This was the real deal. We were going to be in some trouble.”
King was shot in the right thigh while he was still in the van. His leg was completely numb, but he said he felt an astronomical amount of pain.
“You’re hurt but you still have a job to do. I looked up at Travis and told him to open the doors. Next thing I know, we’re on the ground, looking at my leg which was bleeding out and hearing a bunch of gunshots. After I was done shooting, I asked if it was over and he said it was. By that point, I couldn’t hold my gun anymore. I was losing too much blood.”
The episode with King focuses on the chaos of that day, his injury and his recovery. He spent eight months on the couch and has only recently started walking without crutches.
He describes returning to the bank parking lot on the one-year anniversary of the shootout and thinking how small the parking lot was. He recognized the one-year anniversary, but didn’t celebrate it.
“We did our job that day,” he said. “There was a lot of evil there that day and we stopped it.”
Waterman also interviewed emergency dispatcher Matt Spaans, who was working the morning of the shootout.
“At first we thought it was just a bank robbery … but the longer the [gunmen] were inside, the longer they were on scene, the weirder it got. And I know some of the ECOMM staff, some of the sergeants on their way there, were having the same thoughts,” said Spaans.
The sound of the volley of gunfire came over the radio, which is not something you ever want to hear, said Spaans.
“I don’t think any of us were prepared for that. … The nerves were high. The room was definitely tense, but when it actually happened, my stomach dropped.”
Spaans learned the gunmen were dead but was concerned about who was injured and how badly.
“I just know 20 of the officers I talk with all year, multiple could be dead,” he said.
Waterman also discusses how the medical program in place for ERT officers — Tactical Emergency Medical Support — saved lives that day.
“All the training for those five or six medics on the team really kicked in when it became a reality,” he said.
Waterman, who was executive director of the Victoria City Police Union, is hoping employees of WorkSafeBC, the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner and investigators with the Independent Investigations Office will tune in to the podcast.
“There’s always ‘police save the day’ but the after-the-incident processes are really just as stressful as the actual incident,” said Waterman. “I’m hoping people see that. They all have a job to do and a process to follow, but I think part of our job is to tell them how difficult it is for the police to deal with these things.”
