Quebec City police officers honoured for response to 2017 mosque shooting

Quebec City police dispatchers receive at least one phone call perweek from a citizen who reportshaving heard gunshots, according toSgt. JonathanFilteau.

"Ninety-eightper cent of the time, it's a Hydro-Qubec transformer that has blown up," he said.

But on the evening of Jan. 29, 2017, Filteau said it took only seconds to realize the calls coming in weren't aboutanotherfalse alarm.

"There was a roller coaster that came rushing down within those first ten seconds," he said.

The dispatcher informed officers there were several 9-1-1 calls coming from the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre in Sainte-Foy, andthere were multiple victims.

A gunman had entered the mosque moments after Sunday prayers ended, shooting into the crowded room where men and children were saying their good-byes.

Filteau, on duty at the station where he's worked for the past 25 years,wasa 60-second drive awayfrom the mosque.

The only thoughtgoing through his head as he made his way there was that the gunman had to be stopped.

"We don't think about our own safety, you think about one thing neutralizing the shooter," he said.

The 27-year-old gunman, Alexandre Bissonnette, had already left the mosque by the timeFilteauarrived. He later turned himself in.

Six men diedand nineteen others were injured.

Officer's quick thinking saves injured man

Filteau is being honoured at theQuebec Police Awards gala today for his leadership and compassion on the night of the shootingand for his role in quickly setting upa crisis unit to co-ordinate rescue efforts.

His colleague, Const.Francis Simard, is also being honoured for attending to aseriously injured man. The officer used a belt and a rubber hose as a tourniquet to stop the bleedingbefore paramedics arrived.

"Simard'smakeshift treatment would later prove to be a lifesaver for the injured man," the organizing committee of the Quebec Police Awards said in a news release.

Filteausaid being able to act quickly and be resourceful in such a stressful situation all comes down to training.

"When people freeze up, it's because they've never gone through the motions and haven't been trained for that," said Filteau, who also trains new recruits.

He said he has not been seriously affected by post-traumatic stress, he was aware that he did have physiological reactions to what he'd been through in the weeks following the tragedy.

He said in a crisis, the body goes into a state ofhypervigilance, and that has an impact.

"I was forgetting the last names of people I've known for 20 years," he recalled. "I'd end up driving somewhere that was nowhere near where I wanted to go."

Filteau said he took thoseepisodes "with a grain of salt," usinghumour to get through them.

"When you know it's going to happen, you don't overreact," he said.

On the eve of his retirement from the Quebec City police service, Filteausaid he knows what he lived through on the night of the shooting is an integral part of him now, as it is for other first responders went to the aid of the victims.

"It's a part of me, part of my life experience. You don't forget something like that."