OFFICER DOWN TRIAL: “I didn’t know it was a cop” — killer thought it was a home invasion

OPP Const. Ionut Mihuta was the first back-up officer on the scene after a 2023 wellness check turned deadly in Bourget, a village around 50 km east of Ottawa.

He described the crime scene as a slaughterhouse and bloodbath. It left him in shock.

His two fellow officers — Sgt. Eric Mueller and Const. Marc Lauzon — had just been shot.

Mihuta drove as fast as the police cruiser goes — 200 km/h — and when he arrived at the scene, he parked behind the ambulance, actually blocking it.

He then took cover behind the ambulance and assessed the situation, with his gun drawn and extra body armour on, which covered his bodycam.

Mihuta recalled the doomed events of May 11, 2023 at Alain Bellefeuille’s first-degree murder trial Friday.

Bellefeuille is on trial for the 2023 killing of OPP Sgt. Eric Mueller and shooting of Const. Marc Lauzon, after a wellness check gone deadly wrong.

That Bellefeuille shot the officers is not in question, nor contested. His defence said he thought it was a home invasion, while the police theory, since adopted by prosecutors, is that it was an ambush that had Bellefeuille lying in wait to kill police officers.

But Bellefeuille, the jury has heard, never called the police, nor expected them, let alone at 2:30 in the morning. His next-door neighbour called 911, saying she thought she heard gunfire and Bellefeuille may have shot himself. (He didn’t).

She made the call out of concern for her neighbour.

Mueller and Lauzon arrived at the wellness check for a potential suicide call and first went to the front porch with their flashlights. They didn’t knock or announce their presence as police.

The two officers then go to the back of Bellefeuille’s house and shine their lights in the window and knock on the door closest to bedroom.

Again, the officers did not announce themselves as police.

Then the officers, according to bodycam video shown in court, return to the front porch and don’t announce themselves as police until entering through the unlocked front door.

Seconds later, Bellefeuille, roused from sleep, shoots blindly through his bedroom walls, after seeing shadowy figures with flashlights, and one with a gun, the jury heard.

Lauzon was the officer who went in first, announcing police and calling out Alain by name twice. Lauzon had his pistol drawn as he entered the door for the mental-health call. Mueller’s pistol never left its holster.

Bellefeuille is seen seconds later on the dying Mueller’s bodycam footage. He leans in close, saying he messed around with the wrong motherf—er, should never have broke into my house, sorry about that. Then Bellefeuille says ‘ah f—’ around the moment he would have seen Mueller’s vest, emblazoned with ‘police.’

The arresting officer, Mihuta, told the jury it was a dangerous situation.

He told court when he saw an ambulance in Bellefeuille’s laneway, he was surprised paramedics were at an active shooter call.

He parked behind the ambulance and then took cover behind it.

He saw Bellefeuille pacing the front deck as paramedics tended to Mueller, who was bleeding out on the same deck.

Bellefeuille had already disarmed himself and encouraged the paramedics to come inside and help. They did, even though police weren’t around. They asked Bellefeuille if it was safe and he said yes, and asked them to hurry, saying the officer was still breathing. He also told paramedics he didn’t know they were police and thought someone was breaking in. Bellefeuille told the 911 operator the same when he called for an ambulance.

Mihuta was doing traffic stops and actually started, slowly, making his way to the scene before the chaos, and figured it was another routine gun call in the country, where it’s usually a muffler, a hunter’s shot or fireworks.

But Mihuta hit the gas when he heard a fellow officer screaming over the police radio that they had made contact, shots fired and asked for an ambulance. The two main responding officers, Sgt. Eric Mueller and Const. Marc Lauzon, weren’t responding on the radio and Mihuta took that as a bad sign and feared the worst.

He also testified that a screaming officer seemed extremely scared and was running away, and whispering he thought someone was trying to kill him.

That officer was nicked with a ricochet and his left knee was cut while he was ducking for cover outside. He didn’t require stitches.

Mihuta’s arrest of Bellefeuille was intense. He told him to put up his hands and he did, according to audio from the officer’s bodycam.

Mihuta has his rifle trained at Bellefeuille’s head and says: “Don’t f—ing move. I’ll shoot you, don’t move!”

Bellefeuille said he didn’t know who broke into his house, and certainly didn’t want to kill a cop.

The cop tells him to stop talking, and threatens to shoot the “piece of s—.”

Bellefeuille then tells the officer: “Shoot me brother, shoot me. I don’t want to live anymore.”

The officer replies: “You killed a cop you f—ing animal.”

Bellefeuille then yells twice saying: “I didn’t know it was a cop.”

Bellefeuille obeys with the officer’s commands, gets down on his stomach on the front porch, and he’s cuffed behind his back.

Mihuta told the jury he hit Bellefeuille a few times to get him to comply.

But another officer who testified earlier said Bellefeuille was hit after he was cuffed and lying on his stomach. That officer’s bodycam footage captures one strike.

There was much chaos that night.

Mihuta couldn’t find his “brother”, fellow officer Lauzon. He thought he could be bleeding out inside the house. Then, after other police arrived, they started searching for Lauzon, who had been shot multiple times and managed to get out of the house only to collapse in the yard.

The police, led by Mihuta, searched the woods down to the creek, trying in vain to find Lauzon.

The reason officers couldn’t find Lauzon inside or outside the home is because he had already been rushed to hospital by unarmed paramedics, who risked their lives in an active shooter scene.

In examination-in-chief by Crown Attorney Louise Tansey, Mihuta was, at times, overcome with emotion with his voice cracking and wiping his eyes.

He told another officer to keep an eye on the cuffed Bellefeuille and then decided to go in the ambulance with Mueller to hospital. The paramedics told the officer his cruiser was blocking the ambulance, so Mihuta moves his cruiser out of the way, then gets back in the ambulance and tells paramedics to “hurry up.”

He then he learns Mueller had no vital signs, so he starts performing CPR, but then realized he should leave that to the paramedics.

He told court he had supper with Mueller three hours earlier. Mueller was helping him out with paperwork for a promotion.

After Mueller was dead, Mihuta hugged him, kissed him and said his goodbyes, he told the court.