OPP Const. Ionut Mihuta says his emotions got the best of him when he threatened, with rifle drawn, to kill an unarmed suspect only to beat him about the head after he was handcuffed behind his back, and lying on his stomach with his face down.
It was just after 2:30 a.m. on May 11, 2023 when a wellness check turned deadly.
“The emotions got the best of me,” Mihuta testified Monday at the first-degree murder trial of Alain Bellefeuille, charged with killing Sgt. Eric Mueller.
Mihuta’s “brothers” — fellow officers — had just been gunned down and he was speeding to the scene in normally quiet Bourget, around 50-km east of Ottawa.
Once he arrived, he took cover behind an ambulance. The paramedics were treating Sgt. Eric Mueller on the front deck, as the killer, Alain Bellefeuille, paced on the same small front porch deck.
The officer approached the front deck and saw paramedics treating Mueller, and noticed Bellefeuille’s rifle was inside the house in the mud room.
Mihuta’s account was revealed under cross-examination by defence lawyer Leo Russomanno.
His client, 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 the 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. Meuller’s pistol never left its holster.
Mihuta dropped highway traffic duty after hearing a gunshot call related to a wellness check. He started making his way to a bungalow in Bourget. He said he figured it was just another gunshot call in the country, which usually end up being fireworks or a backfire on a muffler. The officer told the jury he had a feeling something was off, so he made his way to the scene and hit the gas when he heard a fellow officer screaming over the radio that they had made contact and shots were fired.
Mihuta testified he was nervous because Bellefeuille had just shot his friends.
His thoughts were wild and racing. Mihuta told the jury he was in fear, saying he thought he would end up dead if there was a second shooter. (There wasn’t and police knew he lived alone.)
Mihuta had his rifle trained at Bellefeuille’s head. Bellefeuille was handcuffed behind his back, lying down on the deck, but the officer said he was in fear and didn’t have the courage to lift up his shirt. He feared a second shooter and explosives to “blow us all up.”
“I was pretty sure I was going to die at any moment, “ Mihuta told the jury.
The fear recounted by the officer is when Bellefeuille is handcuffed behind his back, on his stomach, lying face down with a gun trained at his head.
Right before, Mihuta points his rifle at Bellefeuille and tells him to drop the gun. He didn’t have one, but it was precautionary.
Bellefeuille tells the cop he didn’t know who broke into his house.
Then Mihuta threatens:
“I got the shotgun at your f***ing head. F***ing do something so I can f***ing shoot you, you piece of s***!”
Bellefeuille replies: “Shoot me brother, shoot me. I don’t want to live anymore.”
“You killed a cop, you f***ing animal!”
“I didn’t know he was a cop!” Bellefeuille told the cop.
Mihuta testified that he hit the downed and handcuffed suspect because he wouldn’t shut up and kept talking about his dog, a young chocolate Lab named Phoenix. That and Mihuta was freaked out that Bellefeuille kept looking behind. The constable figured the dog talk was a distraction to stall and testify that Bellefeuille kept looking behind and the officer feared it was to get an eye on him for strategic reasons. All of this is happening while Bellefeuille is face down on the deck and handcuffed behind his back with Mihuta’s C-8 rifle trained at his head.
It was a wellness check, but the OPP’s mobile crisis unit didn’t work the night shift, so it was just police who responded to the report of a potential suicide.
The arresting officer, and fellow officer Lauzon, noted the porch light came on and figured this was key because it suggested Bellefeuille was up and had turned the light on.
But the police dispatcher had earlier relayed information that it was a motion-detection light. Mihuta told the court he couldn’t recall that dispatch.
In a cross-examination, Mihuta said he had never heard of “knock and announce” before Russomanno asked him about it on Monday. The officer, who has since been promoted, also testified that police don’t have to announce their presence until they enter a home. He also testified that he had no specific training for wellness checks and said every case is different.
The trial continued on Tuesday.
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