Murder at McDonald's

by Jessome, Phonse;

  Face down on the cold tile, blood streaming from his ear and neck, Neil Burroughs began to think of Justin, his three-year-old son, and Julia, his wife and best friend. He was going to teach Justin to play ball this summer; whatever was going on here would not prevent him from doing that. Once again, Burroughs pushed himself up from the floor. In the spinning confusion around him, he now saw two men. Maybe this new stranger would understand; maybe he would help.

  “Help me! Please help me!” Burroughs could not be sure if the words were coming out, if the tall stranger could hear his plea. He could see his blood covering the arms of the masked man, who was still standing there; he could hear as the man shouted excitedly to the newcomer: “The guy won’t die! Derek shot him, and I cut his throat, and he still won’t die!” The masked man ran off, and Burroughs again begged: “Please, please help me!”

  It made no sense. He could see that the stranger was listening, but why was he raising that shovel handle? The young father was kneeling now, looking into the face of the stranger, trying to understand what was happening to him. Why did someone he did not know want to hurt him? He was just cleaning the kitchen, doing his job, trying to support Justin and Julia. Why was this happening? Neil felt a crushing blow across his forehead and against his nose as the handle swung violently down. Freeman MacNeil looked on as Burroughs fell to the floor once again.

  But his misery would not end with that vicious blow. Nor would the struggle. Unable to lift his head, Burroughs extended a pleading hand for help; he could feel the steel front of the sink, but it was too slippery for him to pull himself up. As the strength ebbed from his body, Burroughs felt something in his left hand, and he grabbed hold of it—something solid, something to cling to. It was one of the legs holding up the sink. He looked up to see a flash, then darkness, as a bullet entered his brain through a small hole just above his right eye. He did not feel the third and final shot, fired with the gun pressed firmly against the back of his head.

  While Neil Burroughs was fighting in vain for his life, Donna Warren was experiencing a terrifying ordeal of her own. After shooting Burroughs in the ear, Derek Wood had returned downstairs to find the young manager. “C’mon, bitch, get up.” Wood grabbed Donna, led her upstairs to the tiny office, and ordered her to open the safe.

  Donna’s hands shook, tears blurring her vision as she wrestled with the dial. “I’m going as fast as I can.” She wept, gasping for air, trying to remember a combination that she knew perfectly well. Finally the last number clicked in, and the door swung open. Donna, who had been kneeling as she fought with her panic and the lock, rose to her feet, hoping that Derek would let her go back to help Arlene, and crying uncontrollably as she thought of her friend.

  Suddenly she felt a terrible pain and a spinning in her mind; barely aware that she had collapsed, she found herself on the floor, the top of her shoulders against the wall, her legs folded beneath her, her head tilted forward as she watched Derek Wood rifle the safe. Everything around her began to close in, as though she were looking through a narrowing tunnel. The masked man came to the door and gave Wood a kitbag, then left. She saw Wood get to his feet. A flash—and then a bullet entered her right eye; Donna never realized she had already been shot in the back of the head.

  Neil Burroughs was cleaning the sinks at the back of the kitchen when he was attacked. [RCMP crime scene photo.]

  The 1:00 a.m. news had just ended as Daniel MacVicar turned his cab into the driveway, drove up the ramp, and parked just past the drive-through window, where he knew the employees’ entrance was located. Jimmy Fagan grabbed his light blue Canada Games kitbag and opened the door. He handed MacVicar the fare and said goodnight, swinging the door behind him. As Jimmy turned to walk away, he realized the door had not shut properly, and it was not in his nature to ignore it. He stepped back to the car and closed the door properly, waving to MacVicar again as he turned towards the restaurant. McDonald’s employees who arrive after the restaurant is closed can only gain entrance if someone inside opens the large brown door at the back corner of the building; like the black steel door at the front corner of the building, the rear door cannot be opened from the outside. Jimmy rang the buzzer and turned to watch the cab drive away, noticing that Arlene’s and Donna’s cars were still in the lot, along with Neil’s. He’d have someone to chat with.

  At that moment, Derek Wood came out of the upstairs office, carrying a kitbag, a plastic bag, and a metal cash box from the safe. He headed for the door, calling to Muise and MacNeil: “I’m gettin’ outta here. Let’s go.” MacNeil wanted to go downstairs to check on Arlene—she might be alive; she had been breathing when he left her—but Wood argued that it was time to get out. He grabbed the door handle and swung open the door.

  Jimmy Fagan turned as he heard the door open. At first he was startled—he’d expected to see Neil, Donna, or Arlene—but he relaxed when he recognized the new employee, whom he’d met a couple of times when Wood worked the morning shift.

  “Hi, guys.” Jimmy’s smile turned to a puzzled frown as he heard someone say, “Shoot him!” Jimmy saw the muzzle flash after the bullet left the barrel. The bullet entered his brain through his forehead, and all his motor control ceased; there was not even enough reflex action left in his body for him to reach out and break his fall. Jimmy Fagan’s face hit the tiled kitchen floor hard, and his legs remained outstretched in the doorway, preventing the big door from swinging shut. He did not feel the door hit him, nor did he see his attackers jump over his body and run into the darkness.

  As Daniel MacVicar drove down the ramp to Kings Road, he heard what he thought was a firecracker. Glancing back at the restaurant as the car moved forward, he saw two figures run out of the restaurant, carrying kitbags. He wondered it they were workers leaving—maybe they needed a taxi—but instead they headed in the opposite direction, into the field at the edge of the parking lot. Before he could get a good look at them, the car rolled past the corner of the building, and they were gone from sight. On reflection, MacVicar felt something might be wrong, so he stopped the cab and, putting it in reverse, floored the accelerator in the hopes that the screeching tires would get someone’s attention inside. He stopped as he cleared the side of the building, but no-one came to see what all the noise was about. Putting the car in drive, MacVicar turned back towards the drive-through service window and the employees’ door. As he moved past the window, he saw Jimmy Fagan in the doorway.

  MacVicar grabbed his radio mike. “Dispatch, I heard a shot and my passenger’s hurt or something. You’d better get the RCMP and an ambulance out to the McDonald’s in Sydney River.” Another driver answered: “Is your passenger O.K.? Can you check him?” MacVicar was about to park when another voice came crackling over the radio: “Danny, don’t get out of your car. Keep moving and don’t let anyone in until we get there.” It was one of several taxi drivers speeding towards Sydney River.

  The taxi dispatcher quickly called the RCMP and then Curry’s ambulance station, where attendants George Kolezar and Wayne Fitzgerald were relaxing and hoping for a quiet shift. When the call came in, the two rushed to their ambulance and sped to Sydney River; with the aid of their lights and the almost-empty roads, they made the trip in less than five minutes.

  It may have seemed a quick run to the ambulance attendants, but time slowed and panic built as Daniel MacVicar circled around and around the McDonald’s parking lot, the doors locked, praying that help would come soon. Little did he know how close he came to encountering the gunmen he feared.

  About twenty metres away, panic was also building in the minds of Freeman MacNeil, Darren Muise, and Derek Wood as they ran blindly through the field beside the restaurant and towards the Sydney bypass. The three stopped at the edge of the highway, then darted across, into the safety of the darkness on the other side. They plunged into a field, crushing the ice that covered a small brook in the field as they ran uphill, towards the dirt road. The kitbag containing the money struck Derek Wood’s leg as his fe
et pounded the gravel. Finally they could see the two-tone Chevy Impala parked in the darkness where they had left it only a short time before. The few homes in the area were still; the residents were fast asleep as the men ran to the car.

  MacNeil decided to get rid of the bloodied shovel handle he had used to club Neil Burroughs, so he ran down into the ditch beside the car and hurled the handle lengthwise into the culvert that ran beneath the street. Then he clambered back up to the car and jumped in behind the wheel. Darren Muise was on the passenger’s side in front; Derek Wood was in back with the bags. Through the windshield, they could see the top of the large golden M outside the restaurant.

  Three

  MacNeil started the car and drove towards Highway 4, while Darren Muise crammed his mask and blood-soaked gloves into a duffel bag he grabbed from the floor behind the seat, then began taking off the extra set of clothing he had worn over his street clothes. “I finally got to slit someone’s throat,” Muise bragged, as though it had been a lifelong ambition. It was a strange comment, coming from someone who had made it clear to his oldest friend only a few months before that he was not into violence. Muise and his friend were out on the town when they encountered a group of teens who had roughed up the friend a week earlier. The friend saw a chance to even the score, knowing Muise’s martial-arts skills would give him the upper hand. But Muise declined, saying he preferred to do his fighting in a gym.

  The inner door to the basement storage area at McDonald’s, with Derek Wood’s backpack still propping it open. [RCMP crime scene photo.]

  As the big Impala sped away from the dark gravel road, Derek Wood removed his gloves. It was less than an hour since Wood had volunteered to help Arlene with the inventory; now she lay on the floor in the restaurant basement, the victim of a bullet he had fired. A sudden sickening realization hit Wood, but it was not a sense of guilt or remorse. “My fuckin’ bag! We left my fuckin’ bag in the door downstairs—we gotta go back.” Ironically, the backpack marked ESCAPE was now standing in the way of a clean getaway.

  The three headed back to the restaurant; they could get the backpack and, at the same time, go back inside and see if Arlene MacNeil was still alive. Fortunately for Arlene, when the Impala came to a stop at the bottom of the restaurant driveway, the three killers saw the taxi circling above and drove away. MacNeil sped towards the intersection of Kings Road and Keltic Drive, swinging hard left through the intersection and driving down Keltic towards his home. Darren Muise lit a cigarette as the three men tried to figure out a way to explain the pack.

  That gave Wood an idea. “Let me out. I gotta create an alibi,” he demanded, digging through his pockets and emptying the contents onto the seat beside him. He wasn’t sure what he had with him, but if he was going to talk to the police, he didn’t want to be carrying anything that could tie him to the robbery. MacNeil pulled over just before he reached the Sydney River bridge, and Wood jumped out and disappeared into the darkness.

  MacNeil pushed a cassette into the tape player in the dash. He needed to think, and Muise was beginning to ramble. The heavy bass lines filled the car as dance music shook the windows. Muise gulped the smoke deep into his lungs as the two raced towards MacNeil’s home.

  Behind the Impala, back at the intersection of Keltic Drive and Kings Road, another big car sped past, this one coming from Sydney and heading towards McDonald’s, not away from it. It was a taxi driver, John MacInnis, rushing to help his friend Daniel MacVicar and see what was happening at the restaurant. He had not noticed the Impala racing in the other direction. MacInnis turned left and sped up the driveway, coming to a stop near his friend’s cab as it too came to a stop after what, to MacVicar, had felt like an eternity of circling the lot.

  Both drivers got out of their cars and ran to the doorway where Jimmy Fagan lay, face down. MacInnis gently turned Fagan over, noticing the blood running down his face. Fagan was alive, gasping and clenching his teeth in pain. MacInnis laid him on his back and ran to his car to get some paper towels. The stocky, dark-haired driver was surprisingly calm, moving quickly but without panic; he had seen bloodied people before, when he worked as a security guard in downtown Toronto. MacVicar also ran for his car, to radio that his fare been shot in the head and that somebody better get the Mounties over there fast. The calls for help would soon be answered: the ambulance dispatcher had received a second and third call reporting trouble at McDonald’s, and he decided to take a second ambulance and an employee who was working in the company garage, and go out there himself. The second call had come from Sydney police who, along with the RCMP, had been contacted by the taxi company; the third call from an unidentified man, who sounded panicked and would not identify himself.

  At the scene, John MacInnis returned to the doorway and bent over Jimmy Fagan, gingerly pressing a wad of paper towel to the wounded man’s forehead in an effort to stop the bleeding. As he knelt there, MacInnis could hear a telephone ringing inside the restaurant, and he decided to check it out. Following the noise to the manager’s office in the kitchen, he saw Donna Warren slumped on the floor, her shoulders at an awkward angle against the wall. MacInnis reached for the phone on the counter above her head and lifted the receiver; he heard a beeping sound, but no-one was there. Hanging up the phone, he knelt down and tried to help Donna. He pulled her body away from the wall so her neck would not be bent at such a severe angle, hoping this would make it easier for her to breathe. Was that a look of thanks he saw in her eye? He didn’t know.

  Still not feeling any real panic, MacInnis decided to return to the door to tell MacVicar he had found another victim. On his way through the kitchen, he glanced to one side and saw Neil Burroughs lying face down, his head in a widening pool of blood that already extended more than a metre from his body. Burroughs’s head was tilted to the right, his right arm reaching out from his body, his left hand clenched around the leg of one of the big steel sinks. MacInnis lifted Burroughs’s right arm and felt at the wrist for a pulse. There was none. He lowered his ear close to the purple McDonald’s T-shirt to listen for sounds of breathing. There were none.

  MacInnis began to feel unnerved, and he slowly retreated from the restaurant towards the relative safety of the parking lot. As he walked past the stairway that led to the basement, he heard a gurgling sound—and he knew it was not a mechanical sound. The driver suddenly realized that the killers might still be in the building; he was not about to investigate any further.

  Shortly before 1:00 a.m., RCMP Corporal Kevin Cleary finally finished his paperwork. The corporal was working the four-to-twelve shift as supervisor, and was determined to finish a report he’d been working on through the evening. Rather than take the work home, he stayed the extra hour after his shift ended.

  Kevin Cleary, now a sergeant with the New Minas RCMP, joined the Mounties as a teenager, fulfilling a childhood dream. [RCMP photo.]

  Kevin Cleary was six-foot-two and weighed 210 pounds. He was a policeman’s policeman who, after almost twenty years of service, still walked with the erect posture of a cadet in training. Cleary had joined the Mounties at nineteen, fulfilling a childhood dream; by the time he started his training, in Regina, Saskatchewan, he knew the RCMP was for him. He thrilled at the physical challenges the training presented and truly enjoyed the mental discipline instructors demanded of cadets. Cleary, now a corporal and soon to become a sergeant, still loved his chosen career; he still felt he was providing a worthy service to the community.

  As Cleary prepared to head home, something caught his attention. He heard communications officer Stan Jesty radioing a patrol car. Jesty had taken a report on a possible shooting near the Sydney River McDonald’s from the taxi dispatcher and was asking Constable Henry Jantzen to check it out. Jantzen, who had been on patrol in Howie Centre, another bedroom community outside Sydney, turned around and headed for the restaurant—a five-minute drive on Highway 4. Cleary, as the senior officer on duty, would have to respond if the report was genuine, and he was even closer to the
restaurant than Jantzen, so he ran out to his patrol car and set out for McDonald’s.

  Not that he believed there was anything to the call. Almost every police office can recall at least one incident of chasing down a report of a gunshot, only to find that a car was backfiring or someone was target-shooting in the middle of the night. Besides, Cleary thought, it would make sense that this was another case of a car backfiring. The Sydney bypass ran behind the restaurant, and Kings Road was in front of it; both major arteries would have some traffic, even at this hour. Still, Cleary drove quickly towards McDonald’s. He would check out his theory in person.

  “Detachment. Three-zero-seven.” That number identified Cleary’s car—307. He was radioing Stan Jesty.

  “Three-zero. Go ahead, Kevin.”

  “Stan, could you phone that location and get someone on the line, please?”

  “… four.”

  As he neared the end of Kings Road, Cleary could see McDonald’s. He thought the place looked strangely dark but wrote the impression off to anxiety. Trying to put his mind at ease, the corporal radioed Jesty again

  “Three-zero. Any response there, Stan?”

  “No, no answer, Kevin.” Jesty, busy with car-radio traffic, had not noticed that the line ringing through to McDonald’s had finally been picked up. John MacInnis had tried to answer it when he discovered the body of Donna Warren, but no-one was on the other end.

  For Kevin Cleary, the report that the call had gone unanswered set off a series of alarms. He lived near McDonald’s; he had passed the building at all hours and was certain there was always someone working inside. Cleary pulled up the driveway to find Daniel MacVicar still in his car, where he’d remained after radioing to confirm that his passenger had been shot. MacVicar was staring at the back door, where his buddy John MacInnis had gone into the restaurant. A third cab driver, Cyril Gillespie, had arrived and was trying to help Jimmy Fagan.