Suspected Cop Killer's Love Of Heavy Metal 'Had Nothing To Do With' His Alleged Crimes, Says Friend

A friend of the 24-year-old man suspected of killing three police officers and wounding two others in the Canadian city of Moncton says that he is perplexed as to what could have happened to his friend to cause him to commit these horrific crimes.

"[The alleged gunman Justin Bourque] loved MEGADETH but what he did had nothing to do with it," Chris Gould, who shared a love of heavy metal music with Bourque, told Canada.com. "And he's no trained assassin and no militant.

"Something really ticked him, but we don't know what," Gould added of Bourque, who reported loved his guns and hunting. "He was home-schooled all his life and had a really religious family, but that has nothing to do with it either."

Bourque was arrested early Friday morning after police apprehended the suspect in a Moncton resident's backyard.

Mike Campbell, who has known Bourque since they were both two years old and still lives a few houses down from Bourque's family, told Business Insider they became reacquainted after Campbell's father died recently. Campbell was hanging out in his garage with a few friends a few weeks ago when Bourque stopped by to offer his condolences.

"We were just sitting in the garage drinking a little bit of whiskey, listening to some BLACK SABBATH, and having a good time," Campbell recalled. Everything seemed normal.

Suddenly Bourque got up. "'I should get home before I pass out,' is what he said. 'I'm going to go,'" Campbell recalled.

"I told him, 'Get hold of me later.' And he was like, 'I don't know... You take care, Mike. You have a good life.'

"And I said, 'No, man, really. You're not going to come visit me? Come over any time, I'll be here.'

"And he was like, 'That probably won't be able to happen...' I was kind of weirded out by it. A few weeks later, all this crazy nonsense happened..."

Bourque posted the lyrics to the MEGADETH song "Hook In Mouth" on his Facebook page just hours before he is believed to have committed the crimes. On May 5, the alleged shooter posted the lyrics to DETHKLOK's "Castratikon".

According to International Business Times , the lyrics from the song "Hook in Mouth" by MEGADETH allude to a "little man with a big eraser, changing history" with the final lyric of the status stating: "I believe my kingdom will come."

The chorus of the song spells out "Freedom" in acronym. Other cryptic references include a "cockroach in the concrete" and if you "make a person disappear... no one will ever miss you."

Canadian police released the above image of Justin Bourque dressed in army camouflage and armed with two guns.

Back in April, a man suspected of killing five young people at a Calgary, Alberta, Canada house party posted the title of a MEGADETH song, "Dread And The Fugitive Mind", and album title, "The World Needs A Hero", on his Facebook page in the hours before the stabbings.

That was not the first time a MEGADETH song had been linked to an act of violence in Canada. The track "A Tout Le Monde", which originally appeared on the band's 1994 CD "Youthanasia", created controversy in September 2006 because the song was cited in an online post by Dawson College killer Kimveer Gill as one of his favorites before his Montreal shooting spree. He killed one student and wounded nineteen others before committing suicide.