Officer docked day's pay for overlooking victims

A Burnaby RCMP officer has been reprimanded and docked one day's pay in connection with an incident in which a woman sat dying in her house for four days despite a call to police.

Cpl. Mike White, now stationed in Burnaby,was the officer who responded inSeptember 2008 to a 911 call reporting that six shots had been fired in a house in the Fraser Valley community of Mission.

White arrived at the scene but saw nothing unusual and didn't get out of his car to investigate. If he had, he might have found that two people in the house had been shot inan apparenttargetted hit.

One of the victims, Lisa Dudley, was discovered by a neighbour four days later, tied to a chair and bleeding, but still clinging to life.

Dudley, 37, died while being transported to hospital. The other victim, her boyfriend ,Guthrie Jolan McKay, 33, had died at the scene.

Dudley's mother, Rosemarie Surakka, was in tears as she left the RCMP disciplinary hearing Friday.

"She was worth one day's pay," Surakka said, hold up her daughter's picture. "What is that? $250? That was what her life was worth."

RCMP Insp. Tim Shields said the entire force had learned from the incident.

It is now RCMP policy not to leave the scene of a reported shooting without first talking to the person who made the 911 call, said Shields.

No charges have been laid in connection with the deaths and the investigation is ongoing.

Neither Dudley nor McKay were known to police and there was no obvious motive for the shooting, police said at the time.