HUNTER: Cop killers snug on the bottom rung of society
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Cop killer.
Two words, three syllables in all, that say so much.
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What it says is that the person is beyond the beyonds. If they won’t hesitate in pulling the trigger on a cop, that doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for the rest of us.
Sean Petrie, 40 for eternity, will forever be known as a cop killer. Nothing else.
According to cops, Petrie shot Toronto Police Const. Andrew Hong, 48, at point-blank range. In cold blood with an ice-cold heart at a Tim Hortons in Mississauga. In the middle of the day.
His bloodlust was not sated for a second. By sundown, he had shot four others, including Milton mechanic Shakeel Ashraf, who died at his garage. Other injuries in his rampage were grievous.
For Petrie, there will be no faint hope clause, or day parole. A cop made sure of that when he took down the killer in the serene Hamilton Cemetery.
On Tuesday, yellow police tape surrounded the historic cemetery that was as placid and solemn as ever, if you didn’t notice the two cruisers. The 176-year-old cemetery contains the graves of U.S. Civil War veterans, the city’s great and good, and scores of others.
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And briefly, Sean Petrie.
Sources told me that Petrie is “very well known” to police in Toronto, Halton and Peel. What he was known for was extreme violence.
Then again, he’s a cop killer. There were no boundaries to his bloodlust.
Petrie joins a very small club. The murders of police officers are mercifully rare in this country.
But we remember their names. And we remember the names of their killers.
Clinton Junior Gayle, Craig Munro, Rene Vaillancourt, Elaine Cece, Barbara Taylor. Others, like Petrie, got the big adios courtesy of cops or by their own hand.
Vaillancourt, 24, slipped out of the hangman’s noose for the Feb. 1, 1973, murder of Toronto Police Const. Leslie Maitland. Of course, Canada abolished the death penalty and his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
Eventually, he was given day parole, a far cry from swinging at the end of a rope. He would live out his days, Leslie Maitland would not.
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Others, like Clinton Gayle, was allowed out of his minimum security BC prison on day passes. In 1994, Gayle was one of the most notorious and reviled murderers in this country.
He is a cop killer.
And on June 17, 1994, his victim was Const. Todd Baylis, shot to death while chasing the crack dealer through a North York housing project. Gayle laughably claimed self-defence.
No one believed him. He’ll be booted back to his native Jamaica when he’s finally released from prison.
Crackheads Rose Cece and Barbara Taylor are still howling at the moon to get out of prison for the 1998 slaying of Det. Const. Billy Hancox. No one wants to see them released.
They are cop killers.
We will not have to agonize over the fate of Sean Petrie. The justice system will not be able to shock and horrify us on that guy. He’s in the morgue waiting for an express train to hell.
And that’s exactly where he’s going.
He’s a cop killer.
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