Brothers used bank robbery to attract police to get into a shootout with officers, RCMP say
Warning: This story contains details of violence.
Police said Matthew and Isaac Auchterlonie, both 22, had a goal to get into a shootout with police when they went into the Bank of Montreal branch near midday on June 28, heavily armed with semi-automatic rifles and body armour.
The bank robbery was a means to attract police.
The brothers acted alone and had been planning the event since at least 2019, Mounties said Friday.
EARLIER STORY:
Nearly seven months after two brothers held up a bank on Vancouver Island and were killed during a shootout with police, the public may learn more about what transpired that day.
B.C. RCMP and the Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit are set to give an update on their investigation in an 11:30 a.m. PT news conference on Friday morning.
Matthew and Isaac Auchterlonie were shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire with police outside the Bank of Montreal on Shelbourne Street in Saanich, B.C., on June 28, 2022.
Six members of the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team were also injured.
The two suspects, both 22, were later identified as two-thirds of a set of triplets.
In December 2022, six months after the incident, B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office cleared all the involved officers of any wrongdoing.
The agency investigates police interactions where someone is killed or seriously injured, and its report shed more light on what happened the day of the robbery.
IIO report details incident, clears officers involved
Officers from the Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team and Saanich Police Department responded to 911 calls that started coming in at 11:02 a.m. that day.
Ron MacDonald, chief civilian director of the IIO, wrote in his report that the officers all acted lawfully when they fired the shots that killed the Auchterlonie brothers.
According to the report, 16 minutes after stepping into the bank and grabbing a small amount of cash, the brothers walked out into the parking lot as an unmarked van carrying seven police officers pulled in — all members of the emergency response team.