EDMONTON - A family member has identified one of the victims of Friday morning’s shootings at the University of Alberta as Michelle Shegelski.
A security guard for G4S Cash Solutions Canada, Shegelski was shot along with three other officers as they made a delivery to a cash machine at the university’s HUB Mall. Three of the wounded officers have died, while the other is fighting for his life in an Edmonton hospital.
Originally from High Level, Shegelski was a newlywed. Her husband, Victor, did two tours of Afghanistan as a member of the Canadian Forces.
“They were so happy together,” Michelle Shegelski’s mother-in-law, Henrietta, said, before she and her husband began a long, sad journey to Edmonton from their home in Lac du Bonnet, Man. “My son had found a soul mate. He had been to Afghanistan and had gotten through without a scratch. This is just devastating. I can’t even think straight right now.”
The couple had been together several years and were married in April, Henrietta Shegelski said. They had two puppies, which Michelle, especially, loved.
“She was just a very sweet, gregarious, loving person,” Henrietta Shegelski said. “Everyone who knew her loved her. Everyone in our family loved her from the moment they met her.
“I can still see her, with this impish little grin on her face.”
Edmonton Police have launched a massive manhunt for a fellow security guard in connection with the shootings. Police have identified the shooter as Travis Brandon Baumgartner, 21, of Sherwood Park, and are in the process of issuing Canadawide warrants for three counts of first-degree and one count of attempted murder.
Police received their first reports of gunshots just after midnight at HUB Mall, a combined residence and shopping complex that stretches along 112th Street. The security guards were in the process of loading ATM machines when the incident occurred.
A former guard for G4S said he had made the same run himself hundreds of times, and had trained Michelle Shegelski. The last time he had spoken with her she was planning her wedding, he said.
The former guard, who wanted only to be identified by his first name, Tyler, said Shegelski had worked for G4S for about four years.
“She was fantastic — always out there training the new guys, just there to help,” he said.
Her husband had also once worked at G4S, he said.
Tyler described Shegelski as a solid, competent guard: “She knew exactly what she was doing.”
About a year after he trained her, she began training others.
He heard from former colleagues that she was on a training run Thursday night with two trainees. He said the fourth person on the run may have been a second trainer.
Tyler worked at G4S for 4-1/2 years before he quit last August. The protocol at that time was for two guards to work each run; one as the custodian who carried the money, the other as the guard.
On training runs, one trainer would teach one trainee to be the custodian. The other would teach a second trainee to be the guard.
All trainers and trainees would have been armed. Firearms training is done separately, as a two-week course before guards are hired by the company, he said.
“You’re not allowed out of the truck unless you’re armed.”
All guards wear bullet-resistant vests.
“There’s no such thing as a bulletproof vest,” he said. “If you’re up close and personal, it’s not going to stop much.”
The guards would have been dropping off money for banking machines, he said. At the time he worked there, G4S only serviced two of machines at HUB Mall — a machine belonging to TD and another belonging to RBC.
The guards may have only been dropping off money for the TD machine on a Thursday night, he said.
“It’s your standard night stop where you’re going in to put cash into the ABMs,” he said. “If all they took was the cash from the ABMs, it was kind of a small take. That stop, especially on Thursdays, you’re talking perhaps $2,000 to $5,000.
“It’s senseless.”While guards are armed, they must keep their weapons in their holsters unless their lives are threatened, he said.
“I’m still a little bit in shock, because that could have been me,” said the 29-year-old father of two.
Henrietta Shegelski said her son attempted to call her with the news from the police station at 9 Friday morning but that she was at a church event and missed the call. She didn’t learn her daughter-in-law had been killed until she returned home at noon.
“My son was just devastated,” Shegelski said.
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