Quebec City police clarify Halloween sword attack timeline, why public alert wasn't sent earlier

In the moments after a sword-wielding attacker killed two people and injured five more on the streets of Old Quebec on Saturday, confusion reigned.

Mimi Barrow, who lives near the spot where 56-year-old museum administrator François Duchesne was killed shortly after 10 p.m., realized something was amiss because she happened to check Facebook and saw a message from a local restaurateur warning of an incident in the old quarter.

"I wasn't really sure of exactly what was going on. You heard somebody was stabbed, but not to the extent that there was a guy wandering around with a sword randomly attacking multiple people," Barrow told CBC's Breakaway. "I think the phone would have been a fantastic alert."

But the Quebec City police decided against using the Alert Ready system, which sends messages to cell phones and across broadcast airwaves, because they had the situation in hand, a senior officer said.

"The situation was changing rapidly, we had our [command} structure in place that was assessing different strategies, and at the point we had reached, the situation was under control, the communication methods were appropriate to the situation we were confronted with," Insp. André Turcotte said in an interview.

Turcotte also provided greater clarity on the timeline of events.

Early Sunday morning, a police spokesperson said the initial calls to 911 came at 10:28 p.m., which some witnesses contradicted.

One person who came to the aid of a couple who had been slashed on the Frontenac Steps, near the Château Frontenac hotel, told Radio-Canada he called at 10:22.

Events like last Saturday's are chaotic and fluid by definition, but the department now says the initial alert came in about eight minutes earlier.

"People have to understand that when you talk about 10:28, it's after the press conference that happened in the heat of the moment almost as the events were unfolding. After checking all our systems, the calls start coming in around 10:20, 10:21," said Turcotte. "In the seconds that followed, police officers were sent out into the field. So 10:28 wasn't necessarily the first call."

Turcotte said that canine and tactical units were immediately dispatched to the area, and police began their manhunt knowing their suspect was in "a fairly confined perimeter."

Police did end up notifying "local partners" like cab drivers, the transit service and port security that an armed attacker was on the loose. One taxi company broadcast a detailed alert at 10:52 p.m..

It wasn't until an hour later, 11:57 p.m., that the police service sent a general message, via Twitter.

Turcotte said the reference to the National Assembly, which is about a kilometre from where the initial attacks happened, was intended to widen the area police wanted the public to avoid.

"Rather than just give one street in Old Quebec, we wanted to broaden it," he said.

A minute later, a second tweet was sent, urging people to stay home.

Barrow, who by then had witnessed a guns-drawn arrest on her street (it wasn't the attacker) and been told to go home, said the confusion could have been dispelled with a general alert.

"The police did a fantastic job," she said, "but I think there should have been a better warning system in place."