After shooting two St. Albert RCMP officers, Shawn Rehn barricaded himself inside a Sturgeon County home and called a close associate to say he was going to kill himself. He then shot himself in the head.
On Friday, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team released its report on the death of the man who fatally shot St. Albert RCMP Const. David Wynn and seriously wounded Aux. Const. Derek Bond on Jan. 17.
The report said that Rehn died of a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound and the investigation revealed no criminal conduct on the part of all RCMP officers involved.
“The evidence confirmed that Shawn Maxwell Rehn took his own life during the incident,” the report said.
Rehn had shot officers Wynn and Bond inside Apex Casino in the early hours of Jan. 17. They had approached him about a stolen truck in the casino’s parking lot. After the shooting, another officer waiting in a police car outside saw Rehn leave the casino, get into the stolen truck and drive off.
The officer pursued Rehn onto Range Road 251 but lost control of her car on the snowy roadway. Rehn also lost control of his vehicle. RCMP later found the stolen truck abandoned and stuck in the snow about five kilometres north of the casino.
With the help of a service dog, police were able to follow Rehn’s tracks from the truck to a nearby home. The front door of the house had been damaged and the alarm was activated. Police later learned that Rehn did not know the owners of the house. The owners were not home at the time.
The RCMP closed off the area around the home and tried for several hours to communicate with Rehn. Police never made contact and fired no shots, the report said. When officers tried to clear the residence before going in, they heard a gunshot. They found Rehn’s lifeless body in a downstairs bedroom with a handgun by his hand. He had barricaded the door to the room with a folding table.
An autopsy on Jan. 19 confirmed the cause of death but further investigation revealed that he had called someone before he died. The investigation is now complete. The shooting inside the casino remains under investigation by the RCMP Major Crimes Unit.
