EDMONTON — A 10-hour hostage situation in downtown Edmonton ended peacefully Wednesday evening, police say, with the gunman surrendering himself into custody and all remaining hostages released unharmed.
“They’re physically OK and we’re making sure that their mental side is OK,” Edmonton Police Service Insp. Terry Rocchio told reporters Wednesday night.
Police, meanwhile, have taken Patrick Clayton, 38, a disgruntled client of the Workers Compensation Board, into custody.
There were 700 people in the Workers’ Compensation Building when the incident began Wednesday morning and early reports suggested nine people were initially held hostage inside.
By early evening, that number had dropped to two.
Edmonton police were in negotiations with the man — said to be armed with a high-powered rifle — for hours.
“One negotiator was talking since 8:30, nine this morning, and he did a great job,” said Rocchio.
One gunshot was reportedly fired but no one was injured. A witness on the eighth floor told Global News the gunman was in the Workers’ Compensation claims department, and she heard what sounded like two gunshots.
The man entered the building around 8:30 a.m. local time and was able to pass by an unarmed security guard on duty at the time and the pass system that controls access to the building.
The armed man is a former construction worker with a long-held grudge against the board, an acquaintance says.
The man’s relationship with the WCB dates back to a botched knee exam, said Don Bellerose, who lives in the same assisted-living facility as the man.
According to Bellerose, the man told his friends in the building a doctor had jerked his knee too far during a checkup, damaging his ligaments.
An Edmonton TV station received an e-mail from a someone who claimed to be the hostage-taker.
“Dealing with this for the past five years and have been heavily medicated with narcotics, painkillers and anti-inflammatories,” it read.
“Upon telling WCB case workers and supervisors about the doctor ripping my knee, I was told that I was a liar, and (have been) fighting back and forth with WCB to give fairness, one way or another, with my mistreatment, and was treated like s—. They cut me off medications and had to resort to street drugs.”
A man also claiming to be the gunman called the local CBC station, which broadcast his complaints.
The caller said he is unable to work and is angry with the board for severing his benefits.
“I’ve got tax forms here saying I’ve living on $5,000 a year . . . they cut me off for two years. I went to social services and tried to do career development with them because WCB would not retrain me . . . Why do I get this treatment? Why does everybody else get treated better than I do?” he said.
In the last month, Bellerose said, the man has grown increasingly agitated and angry about his situation.
“He was normally not unstable,” Bellerose said. “He was very boisterous and very, very high-strung.”
Still, Bellerose never thought he would do something like this.
The WCB dispute was not the only one plaguing the gunman, Bellerose said. He was also engaged in a long custody dispute with the mother of his child, and three months ago, he threatened to throw himself off Edmonton’s High Level Bridge, shutting traffic for several hours.
Police detectives were inside the man’s building Wednesday, and staff were combing the floors, ready to eject any strangers.
At the WCB building, one person was taken away by ambulance; police say the individual was apparently suffering from a stress or an anxiety attack.
Evacuated employees, coatless, hugging and crying, were ushered onto city buses to keep warm to be debriefed by police. The WCB was sending people home by taxi, as many of them couldn’t access their vehicles or had left their purses inside, said board spokeswoman Danya Therien.
Workers said they saw a nervous-looking man with a long case sitting on a large plant pot outside the building earlier Wednesday morning.
For several years, the WCB has had a policy of checking whether claimants have criminal records, and flags those who do as a safety precaution for staff handling the claims.
The board said the practice was initiated in response to previous violent incidents at board offices in Edmonton and Calgary.
“If you are a WCB claimant, you’ve already had trauma to begin with, because you’ve been injured on the job,” said Janice Schroeder, spokeswoman for the Department of Employment and Immigration. “If you work at the WCB, you deal with people who are under stress every day. It’s unfortunate that something had to escalate to this level. There are better ways.”
In 1991, a worker committed suicide with a gun in a Calgary WCB parking lot.
In 1993, a shotgun-toting worker took several hostages at the Calgary office in 1993 before surrendering.
The WCB had direct access to claimant criminal records until 1996, but now must do the checks through city police.
The WCB is a no-fault insurance system that was established in 1918 to compensate workers for their work-related injuries. The program, established by the Alberta government, is funded through premiums paid by employers.
As a trade-off, Albertans covered by WCB cannot sue their employers for work-related injuries. Over the years, there have been many calls for an overhaul of the system to make it more fair to injured workers, and a new appeal process was established for workers whose claims have been rejected.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business...174/story.html 
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