SaskatchewanA double shooting inside the Estevan police station that left a civilian dead and an officer woulded led to a policy change for securing firearms inside the building, the city’s police chief says.Police chief says more secure holsters now standard in interview roomsJeremy Warren · CBC News · Posted: Oct 10, 2025 6:15 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour agoThis file photo shows an Estevan Police vehicle sitting outside the force’s headquarters in December 2024. (Alexander Quon/CBC)A double shooting inside the Estevan police station that left a civilian dead and an officer woulded led to a policy change for securing firearms inside the building, the city’s police chief says.In 2023, a homicide suspect in police custody at the Estevan station managed to unholster an officer’s gun and shoot the officer before he was shot twice by a second officer.The 19-year-old civilian died and the wounded officer spent several days in hospital. Saskatchewan’s Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) cleared the officers of any wrongdoing in its investigation, a summary of which was released this week.The trauma of that day still lingers in the building, Estevan Police Chief Jamie Blunden said.“The room that it happened in, everybody uses on a daily basis, so you’re always being reminded of the incident,” Blunden said, adding that employees had access to mental health support after the shooting.“Everybody within the police service itself suffered through that critical incident. Whether they were working or whether they weren’t there, they all know everybody and it affected them.”In the shooting’s aftermath, Estevan police established a new policy for how service pistols are holstered. Officers must now have their pistol secured in a level 3 holster — essentially a holster that requires three distinct steps to release a firearm — when in an interview room.The officer whose gun was taken by the suspect was wearing a level 2 holster, allowing easier access to the weapon, according to the SIRT report.The incident started in the early hours of Nov. 1, 2023, when Estevan police arrested a 19-year-old man in connection to a stabbing of a woman at a home in the city.The woman, 46-year-old Karie Ann Guillas, died. The 19-year-old was later identified as her son.At the Estevan police station, two officers put the man in an interview room and started to put his clothes into evidence bags. When an officer leaned over to grab a sweatshirt on the table, the man grabbed the holstered gun, which detached from the officer’s belt.The man managed to unholster the gun, then struggled with the officer until he fired a single shot, hitting the officer in the abdomen.The other officer — the one SIRT investigated — then attempted to disarm the suspect, who fired off a second shot into the wall.The officer drew his gun and shot the 19-year-old twice in the torso.The officer who shot the suspect had “an undeniably reasonable fear of death or grievous bodily harm” for himself and the other officer in the room, the SIRT report said.Blunden said that morning might have gone differently had the new holster policy been in place. Still, he thinks one person is ultimately responsible for what happened in the interview room.“The individual that was arrested for the first homicide … doing what he did caused this,” Blunden said. “That’s the only reason for this to happen.”ABOUT THE AUTHORJeremy Warren is a reporter in Saskatoon. You can reach him at jeremy.warren@cbc.ca.
Estevan police established new gun holster policy in aftermath of police station shootings
