Stratford shooting rampage survivor describes seeing boyfriend killed (2024)

Stephanie Irvine was carrying her two-year-old daughter when she approached her boyfriend as he lay dying in the driveway of their Stratford home.

That’s when a shotgun blast nearly severed her left arm.

But it wasn’t until a fourth shot rang out that Irvine realized someone was shooting at her family and she fled into the house.

“And then it clicked. I’m like, ‘OK, my arm was blown apart. We’re being shot at,’” Irvine said Thursday from Victoria Hospital in London.

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Speaking publicly for the first time about the Aug. 1 shooting rampage that killed her boyfriend and injured her and a neighbor, Irvine described the terrifying ordeal, the events leading up to it and her family’s uncertain future.

It started out as just another summer evening. Irvine, 38, and her boyfriend, Johnny Bennett, 36, were hosting two neighbours and their child for a swim in their backyard pool.

Irvine brought her toddler inside to change her before returning to the garage to install a security camera, while Bennett was sitting just outside the garage in the driveway.

Suddenly there was a loud boom and Bennett yelled out, Irvine said.

“We heard what sounded like something blow up,” she said. “First thing I thought was our camera malfunctioned.”

Then, another boom and Bennett fell to the ground.

“I didn’t know what was going on. I was really confused and I had our daughter in my left arm,” said Irvine, who rushedover to Bennett and touched him with her foot when she was struck by a shotgun blast.

“She goes, ‘mommy, a boo boo, look, your arm, your arm,’” Irvine recalled her daughter saying.

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Irvine put her daughter down and looked at her mangled arm.

“The blood was so hot, dripping down my arm and everything,” she said.

Suddenly realizing the danger, Irvine grabbed her daughter, who was covered in blood, and ran into the house and yelled to her 16-year-old daughter upstairs that she’d been shot.

Irvine’s daughter took the baby and Irvine began crawling into the garage, when she saw a gun barrel aimed at her, she said.

“There was a gun pointing directly at my face, probably eight feet away. As soon as I saw that, I grabbed the door handle and I used my two feet and I pushed myself back in (the house),” she said.

Another shot rang out, sending debris falling to the ground, Irvine said, adding the shooter tried to enter through the front door, but it was locked.

Irvine yelled at her two neighbours inside the house to call 911.

“And then everything went silent,” she said.

One of Irvine’s visitors looked out the garage door to see a second man lying on the driveway near Bennett.

The visitor went outside, disregarding desperate pleas of his wife, and discovered the second man was David Tokley, a neighbour from across the street who had been at Irvine’s home about an hour earlier.

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A shotgun blast struck Tokley, 43, in the head, but he survived.

“That guy is a f–king trouper. I don’t know how he managed to live through that,” Irvine said.

Tokley, who remains in the hospital on the same floor as Irvine, said he was inside the house he shares with his brother when he heard shots fired and ran outside to help.

“I knew there were kids . . . and I was running,” he said. “People were like ‘take cover’ and instead of taking cover I kept running.”

Tokley remembers being tackled and told he’d been shot.

“I didn’t even know I was hit, nothing,” said Tokley, who underwent surgery to have shrapnel removed from his skull.

By that point, Irvine was fading out of consciousness, so she drank a pop in an effort to stay awake. Police soon arrived and put a tourniquet on Irvine’s arm before taking her down the street to a cruiser before she was put into a nearby ambulance.

While walking down the street, Irvine said she saw a third man lying motionless on the ground, whom an officer told her was the shooter, later identified as Ricky Bilcke.

Officers responded on Aug. 1 around 10:45 p.m. to multiple 911 calls about gunshots being fired in the area of Bradshaw Drive and McCarthy Road in the city’s north end, Stratford police said.

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Bilcke, 31, fatally shot Bennett with a high-powered rifle, then grabbed a shotgun and shot Tokley and then Irvine before firing more shots and ultimately turning the gun on himself, police said.

Investigators determined the shooting was the result of an “ongoing neighbour dispute,” police said.

Irvine disputes that Tokley was shot before her. She confirmed she and Bennett had an ongoing feud with a couple who lived across the street and rented a room to Bilcke, but said she’d only spoken with him once.

Stratford police haven’t released any additional information since Aug. 2, one day after the shooting, and haven’t responded to multiple requests for comment.

Once at the hospital, Irvine said she begged hospital workers not to let her die,

“I remember telling them, ‘Make sure you keep me alive. I have my kids and I’m all they have,’” she said.

Irvine underwent two surgeries – doctors put metal rods in her arm – and was told Bennett had died.

“I’m still really in shock. Last night it started to hit really bad and all day this morning I’ve been crying,” she said.

Now, Irvine is organizing Bennett’s funeral Saturday in Kitchener, the city in which the family lived before moving Stratford 18 months ago.

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Despite her injuries, Irvine is determined to leave the hospital for the day to attend Bennett’s funeral.

“I’m never going to see him again. That’s the last time I’m going to see him and I don’t want to see him facing down like that for the rest of my life,” she said of Bennett through tears.

The couple connected on Facebook in 2019 after Irvine came across Bennett’s profile and sent him a friend request. Despite his initial cold response, the two quickly hit it off on the social media platform and met in-person less than a month later.

“Once we met up, we never left each other’s side,” Irvine said.

Irvine has two teenage daughters from a previous relationship, and Bennett had a teenage son and daughter, both of them living in his native Newfoundland, from past relationships.

The couple had a daughter together on Dec. 31, 2021, and settled into life in Stratford, where Bennett worked at a factory and Irvine is a stay-at-home mom.

“Once we had Dakota, his whole life changed for the better,” Irvine said of Bennett, who also became a father-figure to her daughters.

Irvine smiled as she recalled how Bennett would come home from work and always ask the same question: “Where’s daddy’s baby?”

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That would lead to a game of hide-and-seek with Bennett sniffing Dakota and saying he loved the way she smelled.

“They had a very good bond,” Irvine said

Passing the days in her hospital bed with nothing to occupy her mind, Irvine is worried about the future. She can’t bear to return to her family’s rental home, saying it’s now tainted by the violence of Aug. 1.

“There’s bullet holes in my kitchen, in my hallway, in my dining room and in my living room,” she said of the damage from the gunfire.

Family friend Nicky Mercer, who met Bennett and Irvine when she was living on Bradshawe Drive, launched an online fundraiser that has collected nearly $2,500.

Mercer, 40, remembers the first time she met Bennett after he learned she was also from Newfoundland.

“He screamed out to me from down the street and he was like, ‘Hey, I heard I’m not the only Newfie on the block,’” she recalled.

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Mercer also is trying to source new furniture for the family.

“There’s bullet holes in her furniture,” she said.

But furniture is the furthest thing from Irvine’s mind. She’s more concerned about how she’ll explain to her youngest daughter that Bennett is dead.

“I said, ‘Daddy had to go be with grandma and grandpa up in heaven,’” Irvine told her daughter during a recent visit in the hospital.

“I never said daddy died because she doesn’t know what that means, so I tried to explain it to her as best as I could for a two-year-old. It’s heartbreaking.”

And it’s the senselessness of Bilcke’s shooting rampage that’s the hardest for Irvine to comprehend.

“All over nothing, too. We didn’t deserve it. He tore my whole family apart,” she said.

dcarruthers@postmedia.com

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