STAY CONNECTED: Have the stories that matter most delivered every night to your email inbox. Subscribe to our daily local news wrap.

Nanaimo mill security guard describes shooter as a “zombie”

Sep 8, 2016 | 6:07 PM

NANAIMO — As the trial of Kevin Addison entered its second day, emotions ran high as the court heard disturbing testimony from an eyewitness to the death of Michael Lunn, who said the shooter was like a “zombie”.

Security guard Michael Lauder took the stand Thursday to testify about what he saw on the morning of April 30, 2014 as he prepared to end his shift at the Western Forest Products mill in Nanaimo.

Typically, every morning Lunn arrived five to ten minutes early for his 7 a.m. shift at work and parked in the gravel lot nearby the security shack where Lauder had worked for the previous 16 years.

That morning was no different, said Lauder, who glanced out the window of his security shack at a mirror mounted on a tall pole nearby at approximately 6:55 a.m. and saw the reflection of Lunn’s grey truck as it pulled into the lot. Lunn, a forklift driver, had parked in the same spot for as long as he could remember, he added.

“For some reason, as I’ve stated before, I got up from my desk and went to the door to check on Mike,” said Lauder, who had never done that before. “And I don’t know to this day why I did.”

As he looked out the door’s window, Lauder said he opened it about six inches and could see Lunn outside the driver’s side of his truck, facing him.

“As Mike was getting ready to come into the mill I had the office door open, ajar, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a movement to my right. And I happened to see an individual coming up from the parking lot in the direction of the mill. Almost in the same instant, the individual’s arm came up and there was a very loud explosion,” Lauder said, who said he immediately knew what had happened and that Lunn had been shot.

The person, who he thought had possibly come from across the railroad tracks, had approached Lunn from behind and carried a weapon that was pointed in Lunn’s direction, Lauder said. He recognized the noise as gunfire.

“He was like a goddamn zombie,” Lauder later told police. “It was like he was – he was frozen, you know? No – expressionless. I guess that’s what you might want to say.”

Uncertain of what to expect, Lauder said he then dropped to his knees on the floor and locked the door of the security shack.

“I didn’t know what to expect, whether I was part of this incident or not, but I waited, anticipating the sound of steps on the walkway,” Lauder said. After about 30 seconds of waiting and listening with his hand on the doorknob, Lauder got to his feet. “When I opened the door he was gone.”

When he approached Lunn, who was face up on the gravel in a pool of body fluids, it was clear he was dead, said Lauder.

Other testimony offered to the court Thursday centred on both the evidence seized from Addison and his mental state on the day of the shooting.

“He was emotionless and quiet,” said Const. David Buchanan, who was the second officer on the scene of the shooting and escorted Addison to an unmarked police car immediately after his arrest. As he prepared to leave the mill, another man that he did not know approached the vehicle and said words to the effect of “What the f*ck have you done?” said Buchanan.

At the detachment, as he put paper bags over Addison’s hands to preserve any potential evidence of gunshot residue, Buchanan said though Addison was “very emotionless,” he noticed that “he did throw his head back in what appeared to be a grimace.”

Among clothing seized from Addison at the Nanaimo detachment on the morning of the shooting was a pair of blue jeans, said Const. Janelle Canning-Lue, who also took the stand Thursday. Crown asked her to remove the jeans from the plastic evidence bag in which they were stored and describe them to the court.

“These are just a pair of blue jeans that are inside-out,” said Canning-Lue. “There’s a difference in the pocket, one pocket seems to be fully there and the other one is cut.”

The Crown established that it was the front right pocket of the pants and asked Canning-Lue to put her hand through the pocket to demonstrate the bottom was completely cut off before moving on to other evidence.

Addison, a former employee at the mill, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of mill employees Michael Lunn and Fred McEachern and two counts of attempted murder.