By Julie Chadwick

‘I raised the gun and shot him’: accused mill shooter testifies

Sep 22, 2016 | 9:36 PM

NANAIMO — The court heard explosive testimony from Kevin Addison today as defence called him to the stand in the Nanaimo mill shooting trial.

“I do not challenge the fact that Mr. Addison was the shooter,” lawyer John Gustafson told the jury in his opening remarks. “This isn’t a whodunit. This case is about something very different. It’s about intent. The position of the defense, ladies and gentlemen, is that Mr. Addison did not have the necessary mental intention to commit the crimes of murder and attempted murder.”

After he took the stand, Addison himself recounted the events leading up to the Western Forest Products mill shooting on April 30, 2014.

“I kept thinking it was all Andy Vanger’s fault,” said Addison, who said he could not get Vanger out of his mind, and blamed both him and Michael Lunn for the fact that he was not called back to work at the mill when it reopened in 2010.

On the morning of the shooting, Addison said the decision to go to the mill came to him after he got off the phone with the Employment Insurance office about an ongoing benefits claim.

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“I decided that morning that Andy Vanger had used somebody on the inside at EI to keep me from getting my claim,” said Addison, though he added that now he’s not clear why. “Andy didn’t know me. We had never even met. He came to that mill months before it closed. I don’t understand why I thought that.”

That morning, Addison said he went to his gun safe and took a “12-gauge pump” from his collection and realized there was no way he’d be able to walk to the mill openly carrying a gun, he said.

“I cut the barrel off and cut the butt off,” he said. Next, he loaded the gun with five shells from a backpack of old ammunition his grandfather had given him. He put a few extra shells in his pocket, he said, but he doesn’t remember how many or what variety of 12-gauge shells they were.

“At this point did you have any idea what you were going to be doing with this gun?” asked Gustafson.

“No idea,” said Addison.

“Did you walk to the mill?”

“I did,” he said.

“What did you do with this gun while you walked to the mill?”

“I cut my pocket out in my pants and I put it in my pants,” Addison said. He walked through the streets to the railroad tracks and then headed to the mill. It was a walk that would typically take 20 minutes, he said.

Upon his arrival at the mill, a truck came flying into the parking lot, pulled in and “parked really fast,” said Addison. Lunn emerged from the driver’s seat.

“I went walking up towards Mike and uh, when I got there, all of a sudden he turned and looked at me and I don’t know why, I just said to myself, ‘You don’t need that f*ckin’ arm,’ and I raised the gun and shot him,” said Addison, his voice shaking. “I don’t know why, I don’t know, because he was wearing a T-shirt and I could see the skin of his arm? That thought just went in my head.”

Mike fell down, said Addison, who began to walk towards the office.

“What were you expecting would happen when you shot at his arm?” asked Gustafson.

“I thought I was going to blow his arm off,” said Addison.

“Did you think he was dead?”

“No.”

“Did you think he was dying?” asked Gustafson.

“No, I started walking towards the mill and I started hearing him screaming and I thought, ‘Well, he’s been hit,’” said Addison.

In his cross-examination, Crown counsel Scott Van Alstine returned to this point and pressed Addison on why he didn’t help Lunn or think “what have I done?”

Addison responded that he “wasn’t thinking.”

“You had to know, if it was a slug, it was likely going to go through his armpit and through his body, wrecking ribs and lungs, you had to know that,” said Van Alstine.

“No, I didn’t know that,” said Addison quietly.

“How long, sir, had you been hunting at that stage?”

“Since I was a teenager,” said Addison.

“And you’ve hunted big game, haven’t you?” said Van Alstine.

“Yes, I have.”

Once inside the office, Addison said his intention was to find Vanger and make him tell the truth, ask him why he had destroyed his career and who his “insider” was at the EI office.

According to Addison’s account, he passed by an office where three men were speaking and continued on to Vanger’s office, which he found dark and empty. Doubling back to the where he had initially seen the men, Addison said that at the office door he fired a shot into the wall.

At this point he said Vanger tackled him, and while they were wrestling with the shotgun it went off, and then went off again, said Addison.

“I started pulling on the gun and I pulled him, holding onto it, right out of the office and we went kinda towards the common room and we were wrestling around there and the next thing I knew I got hit on the head,” said Addison.

Addison claims he had no intention to shoot Earl Kelly or Fred McEachern and that he was unaware Tony Sudar had been shot. Sudar testified earlier in the trial that he had been shot in the right cheek while turning in the hallway and looked up to see a gunman holding what he initially thought was a stick.

McEachern was shot in the back and died; Kelly, also shot in the lower back, survived.

Addison said he had known McEachern for 15 years and knew Lunn, who he described as “a good guy,” for 25.

The trial is expected to wrap by the end of the week.