They are alone. Alone with a mad gunman bearing down on them and no way to communicate their situation. Back in the Communications Centre panic is setting in. Communications personnel have lost contact with the officers at the scene and are worried. Telephone calls continue to light up the consoles.
Callers report hearing a volley of shots just after seeing the officers leave their cruisers.
A distraught communicator continues to call but silence is all that returns. Please let them be alright. The portable radio transmissions, the lifeline that officers have come to rely on and intimately trust, suddenly evaporate into thin air leaving officers in a dead zone. This situation was a regular occurrence for members of the Guelph Police Service. In fact, between February 1997 and September 1998 officers and communicators reported transmit and receive failures at 220 locations throughout the City of Guelph.