The people of Newfoundland and Labrador learned some startling information about Premier Dwight Ball Tuesday.

According to court documents released Tuesday, Ball played a key role in identifying Brandon Phillips, the man convicted of killing Corner Brook native Larry Wellman in 2015 and who was being harassed by drug dealers over money owed.

I travelled to Deer Lake early Tuesday evening in hopes of getting area residents to provide comment on the latest revelation involving the premier.

Ball is the MHA for Humber-Gros Morne, which takes in Deer Lake.

The issues he was dealing with were while he was preparing for the last election — long before he tipped police off about Phillips.

With that in mind, I wanted to know if people would have voted for Ball for premier of the province if they had known about this connection beforehand.

I approached several people at the Tim Hortons location. Tim Hortons is a normal gathering place for people and there is usually plenty of conversation.

So, I figured it was a good place to start.

It didn’t work out for me.

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The people I spoke with were not interested in talking about the issue. Several of them told me it was the first they had heard of the report.

Some said they didn’t have enough information to give their opinion, while others simply said they weren’t interested or that they weren’t from the area.

I felt like I was spinning my wheels, so I decided to check out other locations to see if somebody would want to talk about a topic that was starting to gain momentum across the province.

Nobody wanted to talk to me at the Big Stop.

Most of the people I approached were just passing through town, so didn’t want to chat. Some of the truckers taking a short break to grab a coffee preferred to remain mum.

I had no luck when I asked a couple of people outside the local Dollarama what they thought of the Dwight Ball revelations.

Hoping to get someone’s reaction, I tried another place where the events of the day are common water cooler talk — the stadium.

Oddly, nobody standing around the glass watching a minor hockey practice at the Hodder Memorial Recreation Complex wanted to go on the record for one reason or another.

My search ended without anything I’d consider luck. Unfortunate to say the least.

All of this is not to say the people of Deer Lake don’t have an opinion on what the premier was involved in prior to gaining office.

I just might not have run into the right people.