A man wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for the murder of a Calgary woman has been killed in a shootout with RCMP on a highway west of Edmonton.
Sources confirm to CTV News that Abderrahmane ‘Adam’ Bettahar was fatally wounded on Thursday evening following a pursuit by RCMP on Highway 16 near Evansburg.
The 21-year-old was wanted for first-degree murder in the death of Nadia El-Dib, whose body was found behind a home in the 1000 block of Maitland Drive N.E. on March 25, 2018.
RCMP spotted a man at about 5:15 p.m. who was believed to be wanted on a warrant issued out of Calgary and attempted to stop his vehicle.
The suspect was able to avoid tire deflation devices and RCMP continued to pursue the vehicle as it headed east towards Nojak.
The vehicle eventually came to a stop at Highway 16 and 22 North and the suspect engaged in a confrontation with RCMP officers.
An RCMP officer was wounded in the incident and was air lifted to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Steve Hargreaves was travelling to Jasper from St. Albert when he saw about 15 police cruisers following a vehicle.
“His front tire was completely blown out,” said Hargreaves. “The guy jumped out of his car, he was all kind of ready, geared up and he got down on one knee, and the police all stopped and there were about three policemen got out, but one guy, there was probably only one guy that had a shot.”
Hargreaves says the suspect took a shot at police and that’s when he started to look for a way to get out of the line of fire.
“I couldn’t really go forward because he was shooting across the highway ahead of me,” he said. “So I just hit the gas and at that point they really started to load on each other. There must have been, maybe 20 shots fired, or something like that, between the guy who was on his knee and the policemen.”
Hargreaves says the suspect looked like he had been hunting. “When he got out he looked big, he looked more like he was a hunter. He had a big, kind of heavy jacket on.”
He says the suspect appeared to angle his vehicle into the ditch so he would be covered while he confronted officers.
“He put himself in a position to take these guys on because he cut towards the middle and angled his truck in the ditch so when he jumped out of his truck he had full cover from all of them, so he was definitely preparing himself for a gun fight. When you know there’s 30 plus armed police, you’re not anticipating that things are going to go well for you,” said Hargreaves. “He wasn’t interested in getting out of there alive, he was just interested in hurting people and doing as much damage as he could before he went because there was no way that was going to end well for him.”
Hargreaves says it didn’t seem real and that it was like a scene out of a video game.
“It sounded more like a paint ball game than what you hear at a shooting range, there was no big bangs, it was like pop, pop, pop,” said Hargreaves. “It was pretty scary, everybody was lying down in the car, as we were kind of racing through this and left it behind us.”
He says the entire experience was surreal and he commends the officers for their actions.
“You watch what those police officers do and the situations they put themselves in to protect people, it is not something you’d ever want to do yourself or see, you got to take your hat off to anybody that would put themselves in a position to do that, it was quite incredible to watch.”
The injured officer, Sgt. Brian Topham, 59, is listed in stable condition in hospital in Edmonton.
“I can tell you that he is still in the hospital but he's in good spirits and he's recovering well,” said RCMP Corporal Laurel Scott. “Clearly he was very lucky if he is now awake, talking and in good spirits and recovering.”
ASIRT is now investigating.
