| MegaMx | 02-17-2009 06:28 PM |
Another death (Feb 17) This time for the good guys
Quote:
VANCOUVER — The Public Safety minister's visit to the violence-wracked Lower Mainland was overshadowed Tuesday by a home invasion that ended with the victim killing one of his attackers.
The latest shooting came one day after a mother was gunned down in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, as her four-year-old watched from the back seat of their car.
In Tuesday's incident, a south Vancouver mother watched in horror as two gunmen forced their way into her home and pointed a gun at her son.
Mabel Mohammed said the gunmen were asking for someone named Azim, who the family does not know.
She told them they had the wrong house. They then shot and wounded her son Aleem, 19, in the shoulder.
His brother Amir then wrestled the gun away and shot one of the assailants dead. The other fled.
"We are in danger. They came to the wrong house," she said.
Nazreen Dean said neither of her brothers have any gang connections, and is convinced the gunmen came to the wrong home.
"They were asking for someone who we don't know," she said
Dean said Amir was arrested for grabbing the intruder's gun and shooting him.
"He had to do that to protect his brother. His brother was already shot in the shoulder and the lip."
Police asked the people at the nearby Ebenezer Baptist Church to not venture out after the incident.
Parents also rushed to pick up their children from the nearby Sunset Montessori Children's House. No one at the child-care centre was injured.
The shooting comes on the same day that Peter Van Loan, the federal Minister of Public Safety, said Vancouver is Canada's centre of gang activity. It follows a rash of other shootings and gangland hits across the Lower Mainland.
On Monday, 23-year-old Nicole Marie Alemy of White Rock, B.C., was shot and killed while driving in Surrey. Her four-year-old son was in the back seat and survived.
The Cadillac she was driving was registered in the name of her husband, who is co-operating with police.
The woman's four-year-old son is in the care of officials with the children's ministry, because police had concerns for the boy's safety.
Police still are trying to figure out why the woman was targeted and shot, said RCMP Cpl. Dale Carr of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team.
"It has all the earmarks of a targeted hit," Carr said.
Investigators are trying to determine "whether it's domestic-related or gang-related."
Carr said the boy "probably went through the most horrific thing a child could go through: He watched his mother get murdered."
The woman was driving south on 148th Street at about 10:30 a.m. local time, when her Cadillac was sprayed with gunfire on the driver's side.
The car coasted through an intersection, and was steered by a passerby across a sidewalk and up onto the driveway of a house.
Police arrived on the scene to find the woman dead and the little boy distraught, said Carr on Monday as he stood half a block from where the woman's body remained inside the car.
He said the child appeared to be unhurt, but "he is being dealt with to ensure that he didn't sustain any injuries."
Carr said it was stunning that a small child was in the Cadillac when it was targeted.
"It's just beyond comprehension. You can only hope that these individuals that are involved in this activity just didn't know the child was there," Carr said. "That's the only thing I can imagine."
He said police could not say yet if the deadly attack had anything to do with a rash of other shootings and gangland hits across Metro Vancouver this year.
"We have not made any other links at this time to any other homicides, to any gang-type activity," he said. "It could be anything from gang-related homicide to a domestic (dispute) to the unthinkable, where just someone randomly did this."
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, who has been lobbying for all levels of government to do something about gang warfare, was outraged by the apparent indifference of the shooters.
"What happened today was absolutely unconscionable. To have someone shot in front of a four-year-old child is so far over the top," Watts said. "We've seen the escalating violence throughout the Lower Mainland, and this is just beyond ridiculous.
"You can see with this escalation, (gangsters) don't care. And if this is a redistribution of power with the gangs in the drug trade, it is only going to escalate," she said.
Watts was to meet Tuesday with federal Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, who told the Vancouver Sun last week he was coming to Metro Vancouver because the region's violent crime has reached "crisis proportions."
Watts said local governments need financial help from Ottawa to increase police enforcement.
"We need more police, there is no doubt about it. Municipal governments are footing the cost for policing, and this is beyond our capability," she said.
Meanwhile, another shooting — this one non-fatal — took place earlier Monday about three kilometres away in Whalley, B.C.
A 40-year-old man drove away from the scene of the shooting in his Range Rover and was found by ambulance attendants in Langley at about 12:40 a.m. He had been shot in the shoulder.
RCMP Cpl. Peter Thiessen said the earlier shooting appeared to have been targeted.
But Thiessen said the man who was shot was not the intended target. The target was sitting in the back of the vehicle and was uninjured, he said.
One neighbour told the Vancouver Sun he heard about six shots at about 12:17 a.m.
The gunfire appeared to have erupted outside a strip club called T-Barz.
Thiessen said investigators were still working to determine whether the victim and his friends were at the club before the shooting.
There have been several other shootings within blocks of the site in recent months, including a Feb. 2 hit on James Erickson.
Thiessen called the incident "a significant shooting."
kbolan@vancouversun.com
lculbert@vancouversun.com
| http://www.canada.com/news/Invader+k...549/story.html |
