'All of them had a heart of gold': Wentworth residents remember beloved neighbours killed in rampage

Families working through grief The weekend's tragedy has hit many communities hard. Bruce Frisko reports.

WENTWORTH, N.S. — There isn't much to see at what used to be the home of Sean McLeod and Alanna Jenkins.

Guarded by police and military, investigators are poring over what's left of the burned rubble -- one of 16 active crime scenes after a mass killing left 22 people dead in several Nova Scotia communities.

A few kilometres away, Jody and Shelly MacBurnie are doing their best to resume some sort of a normal life after the devastating weekend rampage robbed them of some of the most important people in their lives.

More than neighbours, Sean and Alanna were their best friends, and the four did everything together.

Aware there was a shooter on the loose, Jody got the stunning news his first cousin was among the victims.

He called and texted his friend, Sean, but there was no response.

"Basically, when I was just starting to hang up the phone, I was just standing in the driveway, and I saw an RCMP cruiser drive by my driveway, and out the road," said Jody.

The house was burning when 70-year-old Tom Bagley hurried up the road to help.

He, too, died in a hail of bullets.

"That's the thing," said Jody. "Tom was a saint on the road as well. He's the first guy that would do anything for anybody out here."

Shelly MacBurnie says, "he had a special place in my heart, that's for sure."

Lillian Campbell was also gunned down in the area. Her neighbours were out walking and heard the shots.

All of it's been devastating in the sprawling, but tight-knit community along Hunter Road.

"Everyone one of these people that was involved with us, like Greg, Blair, Jaimie, Tom, Sean, Alanna, all of them had a heart of gold, and every one of them would just do anything for anybody," said Jody.

As people in the community try to come to terms with the magnitude of what happened, they’re doing what they can to support each other. They came together for a birthday party for Tom Bagley on Tuesday night, who would have been 71.

It was a small bright spot amid a lot of heartache on Hunter Road.