Facebook posts that prompted the RCMP's emergency response team to surround a Grandin-area condominium earlier this month included references to a fertilizer bomb, killing multiple police officers and notorious gunman James Roszko.
Excerpts from the Facebook posts were detailed in the application for a search warrant, which the Gazette obtained this week.
Local police, along with the emergency response team, dog unit and hostage negotiators, surrounded the home on Jan. 13 and after an hour of negotiating, one man came out of the home and surrendered to police.
Officers obtained the search warrant shortly after the standoff was over. The warrant includes a sworn statement from an officer detailing their grounds for searching the home and stating that they were looking for computer equipment and firearms as part of the search.
The investigation was launched when a Facebook employee, a member of the company's law enforcement relations team, reported troubling posts to the FBI, who then contacted the RCMP.
The posts, which were written on an account with the username James Houtstra, seem to have been the impetus for the police investigation.
The first post listed in the warrants is chilling in its apparent plans for violence.
"After, 4 years clean I cannot tell you how good that first shot of heroin felt. That and around 50 Xanax. Now it's time to plan the killing spree. I have always though the murder-suicide is the way to go," reads the post, which was excerpted in the warrant documents.
The author of the posts describes wanting to kill police officers and seems to idolize Roszko, who killed four police officers in Mayerthorpe in 2006.
"Now where to get 12ga shotgun ammo. Dug up the old .380 lastnight and it shoots like I bought is yesterday I can't wait until this is all (expletive) over. I'll be joining my hero James Roszko."
The author of the posts then suggests that they will aim to kill more officers than Roszko.
"I'm gunna lure them in, have the place rigged and in going to make 4 look like a (expletive) drop in the bucket. I'm shooting for 20+."
The rest of the post is a profanity-laced tirade against unspecified elected officials, the government and the failing state of democracy and includes a reference to using a fertilizer bomb.
Past issues
The rest of the warrant details previous interactions Houtstra had with police including an incident last June where Houtstra was reported to have threatened a neighbour over damage his children had allegedly done to a neighbour's property.
There was another complaint from 2008 about a neighbour who spotted Houtstra using what they believed to be drugs.
The warrant also details an interview with Houtstra's common-law spouse, who police stopped coming out of the house earlier in the afternoon.
According to the warrant, she told police Houtstra was not armed, but did have friends and family members with guns.
Houtstra was charged with a single count of uttering threats to cause death and is being held without bail. He will make his first court appearance Monday.
Though part of a sworn statement, none of the information has been proven in court.
