The 2014 Moncton RCMP Shootings and Justin Bourque

The June 4 attack

On June 4, 2014, police in Moncton, New Brunswick, responded to reports of an armed man moving through a residential area. During the response, three RCMP constables were killed: Douglas Larche, Dave Ross and Fabrice Gevaudan. Constables Eric Dubois and Darlene Goguen were wounded and survived.

The killings triggered an extensive manhunt and a large police response. Justin Bourque was arrested after roughly 28 hours. The RCMP later commissioned an independent review examining the operational response, equipment, training, supervision, communications and other lessons from the incident.

Guilty pleas

In August 2014, Bourque pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder. The convictions were therefore not based on an unresolved allegation or an untested public theory: criminal responsibility was formally admitted and entered by the court.

The agreed facts described the attacks as planned and deliberate. Crime by Region does not treat Bourque's political or social statements as a proven explanation for every aspect of motive; the legally established facts are the deliberate attacks, the guilty pleas and the resulting convictions.

The original sentence

On October 31, 2014, Bourque received life sentences. Under the law then applied, the sentencing judge ordered three 25-year parole-ineligibility periods for the first-degree murders to run consecutively, creating a 75-year period before parole eligibility. The attempted-murder sentences ran concurrently.

That unusually long parole-ineligibility period later became legally unsustainable because of a separate Supreme Court of Canada ruling on multiple-murder sentences.

The 2023 Court of Appeal decision

In 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada held in R. v. Bissonnette that the statutory scheme permitting consecutive periods of parole ineligibility for multiple murders violated the Charter. Bourque then appealed the parole-ineligibility component of his sentence.

On March 2, 2023, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal allowed that part of his appeal in Bourque v. R., 2023 NBCA 13. The court reduced the parole-ineligibility period from 75 years to concurrent 25-year periods. It explicitly left the other aspects of the sentence unchanged.

The change does not mean Bourque was released, acquitted or guaranteed parole. He remains serving life sentences. Eligibility to apply for parole after the applicable period is different from a right to be granted parole.

Remembering the victims

Ten years after the shootings, the RCMP publicly remembered Constables Douglas Larche, Dave Ross and Fabrice Gevaudan for their service and for the families and community they left behind. The force also acknowledged the continuing effects on survivors, other officers, employees and the broader Moncton community.

Current status

This case is classified as Solved / Adjudicated. Bourque's three first-degree murder convictions and two attempted-murder convictions remain intact. The principal later legal change concerned parole eligibility, which was reduced to 25 years by the New Brunswick Court of Appeal in 2023 following binding Supreme Court precedent.