Strongquill the 'enemy': Sand's diary

Slain RCMP Const. Dennis Strongquill was the enemy and is "right where he should be," the man accused of killing him wrote in a prison diary.

Corrections officers found the journal in Robert Sand's cell last week. Sand, 24, and his girlfriend, 21-year-old Laurie Bell, are charged with first-degree murder in connection with Strongquill's death. The couple, from Westlock, have pleaded not guilty.

Sand, his younger brother Danny and Bell were pulled over by Strongquill and his partner on Dec. 21, 2001. In a videotaped statement, Sand said he shot at the police car, chased it when the officers tried to drive away and then shot at the passenger side again, after they rammed the vehicle in the parking lot of the RCMP detachment.

In the diary, one page of which was read to the jury Tuesday, Sand writes about viewing evidence pictures of the shot-up police car and autopsy photos of Strongquill, a 52-year-old father of six.

"And I started to think, he's just a man, and shouldn't be dead. He had a family and friends, and now he is a body on a table," Sand wrote. "I realized it's not the man I'd hated, but the uniform he wore."

Indepth: Robert Sand's prison diary

But he had a change of heart after viewing pictures of Danny Sand, who was killed by a police sniper about 14 hours after Strongquill was shot. Danny Sand was on the roof of a rural motel in Saskatchewan with a rifle in his hands.

"But Then I fliped to the pics of dan, and my thoughts changed again. Cuz now I felt that the other man is right where he should be," Sand wrote. "And when I looked upon the cop car I felt pride, and remembered the battle. I remembered how these enemy soldiers fled in fear and cowardess. I saw how much damage I'd caused to there unit and smiled, from the knolage, that the enemy isn't as strong as they want us to believe."

The jury had earlier been read pages found in the Saskatchewan motel room, which the Crown says Robert Sand wrote. In them, the writer describes having so much "firepower" that any police officer who pulls them over will "be sorry."

From April 25, 2003: Diary in evidence at Strongquill trial

The jury also heard Tuesday from the medical examiner who conducted Strongquill's autopsy.

Dr. Thambirajah Balachandra described Strongquill as a caged animal, trapped in the passenger seat of his RCMP vehicle. He told the jury that Strongquill could have survived three of the four shotgun blasts that struck his body, but that it was the final shot to the back that ultimately killed him.

From May 26, 2003: Strongquill's partner gives emotional testimony

Indepth: The Strongquill Trial (from CBC Manitoba)