“I heard a bang.”
David Henry Bujold recounts the sound which set things off during a shooting incident behind the Williams Lake Stampede grandstands.
The July 3 incident caught Bujold and his fellow Stampede fans completely off guard and resulted in tense and terrifying moments for many nearby.
Bujold said he heard the sound coming from the front gate area and then he heard a second.
“That’s when it clicked in, this is not firecrackers.”
Bujold had been waiting in line for mini-doughnuts to take to his wife when he heard the shots.
Reacting quickly, Bujold threw himself to the ground and immediately began trying to get others to safety.
He pulled two women behind some protection, then he helped bring a little girl over as well and then another woman.
“I told everybody to lay as low as you could — lay flat,” recalled Bujold.
After a few minutes, they saw people walking around and someone called out “They got him.”
Bujold said they thought it was probably safe to come out from where they were taking shelter and he began to look around.
He saw Rosalie Montgomery, who had been standing behind him in the lineup, and noticed she did not get up with everybody else.
He saw some blood and realized she had been shot, he called out for help for her.
Once paramedics were taking care of Montgomery, only then did Bujold even realize he himself had been injured, when someone told him he was bleeding.
Looking down he saw his right side was “all torn up with road rash.”
“They wrapped me up pretty good at the scene,” remarked Bujold, who had bandages covering large parts of his right arm and shoulder and some of his left arm following the incident.
Bujold spoke to the Tribune from outside a medical clinic in Alberta, where he had sought follow-up treatment for his wounds.
The physician at the clinic ordered a number of x-rays and Bujold learned he had also broken a big toe in the incident and badly sprained the rest.
“Should have worn my cowboy boots,” quipped Bujold, who said his reaction to what happened was all automatic.
“My first concern was the other people.”
Bujold is able to get around, though he jokingly said he is “limping around like an old man.”
“I’m 63 years old, I don’t heal up like I used to.”
He grew up in Williams Lake, after moving to the lakecity with his dad when he was six years old, but now lives in Alberta.
He and his wife had been taking in the Stampede during a visit to see family.
Read more: Injured bystander recovering after being shot at Williams Lake rodeo
Read more: Two people shot behind grandstands during Williams Lake Stampede, 1 man arrested
ruth.lloyd@wltribune.com
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