Court records show that the Sault Ste. Marie man who killed four people — including three children and his former girlfriend — before turning a gun on himself last week was convicted two decades ago of smashing a police car window and impaired driving.
Family have identified the gunman behind the shooting rampage in the northern Ontario city as Bobbie Hallaert, who was also charged with assaulting a police officer in Sault Ste. Marie in 2019.
Court documents obtained by The Canadian Press show that Hallaert was convicted in 2003 of causing a disturbance at sports bar and breaking the rear window of a police vehicle in Midland, Ont., in August 2002.
Further records show that Hallaert pleaded guilty in October 2004 to impaired driving and failing to stop for a police officer in March of that year in the central Ontario township of Tay.
Police in Sault Ste. Marie, who have not named Hallaert, have called the shooting a case of intimate partner violence.
The 44-year-old shooter first broke into a home on Tancred Street on the night of Oct. 23 and killed 41-year-old Angie Sweeney. He then drove to a second home on Second Line East, where he killed three children — aged six, seven and 12 — and shooting another woman, aged 45, who survived.
As SooToday previously reported, Hallaert pleaded guilty to assault in December 2021 after a scuffle with a Sault police officer that ended with the officer's glasses getting broken.
He was given 12 months probation, which included an order not to possess firearms. That order expired in December 2022, just ten months before the mass murder-suicide.
Sault Police have said they recovered two firearms from the home on Second Line: a handgun and a long gun.
The Canadian Press