| StylinRed | 03-03-2011 11:12 PM |
Quote:
Police backtrack on reports of exchanged gunfire in fatal Surrey shooting
By Sam Cooper, The Province March 3, 2011
A Surrey man says the unidentified man who was allegedly shot dead in a gunfight with a Mountie after a high-speed chase Wednesday died after two cars smashed into a backyard and about 15 shots were fired.
Chad Erickson, a 29-year-old construction worker, told The Province the police-involved shooting incident seems more complicated than initial police reports suggest.
Meanwhile, RCMP have issued a release that backtracks on its earlier report of “an exchange of gunfire” between officers and the suspect.
“The facts related to this incident are under investigation, and as such, at this time there can be no definitive statements made about whether or not shots were exchanged,” the media release said.
Saanich Police Sgt. Dean Jantzen called the original reports “premature,” saying forensic investigators have not yet determined how many shots were fired, and by whom.
Saanich Police are investigating the police-involved shooting at the request of the RCMP, he said.
Erickson said on Thursday afternoon he could see police investigators examining the dead man’s bloody body in his backyard.
“He’s brown, and he’s got black bushy hair,” Erickson said. “You can see blood coming from his nose and mouth.”
Erickson said he and residents in his home were woken to the sound of about 10 or 15 shots at 11:15 p.m.
About an hour later, three or four shots were heard, Erickson claimed.
“They were yelling to get out of the car and don’t touch the gun,” after initial shots were fired, Erickson said.
Jantzen said police are not yet able to verify Erickson’s story. “Let’s be clear, we still haven’t interviewed all the officers (involved),” he said.
Another person in the area, Kamal Singh, said police screamed at her to leave an intersection in the area long after 11:15 p.m., according to the woman’s husband, Kuar Singh.
The incident started when a Surrey Mountie pulled over a newer-model white Chrysler 300 in the 15400-block 16th Avenue around 11 p.m., police say.
Surrey RCMP Cpl. Drew Grainger said the man has not been identified yet, but was in his “late 20s.”
An officer saw that the man driving the car was armed with a rifle and called for backup, police say. The driver fled the scene, and a short police chase was called off.
Soon after other officers spotted the Chrysler on King George Highway and used a spike belt to stop the car.
A witness, Martin Lauze, said he was driving at King George Highway and 152nd Street around 11 p.m. when a Chrysler with tinted windows whipped by him.
“I saw a car speeding up behind me driving in the wrong lane,” Lauze said. “He passed me and went straight through the red light. I thought he was either a bad guy or a cop, one of the two.”
At that time the driver was “just running,” and not being pursued by police, Lauze said.
Lauze said when he eventually saw about 40 police cars at the scene where the driver’s car was apparently pinned by a police car before shots were fired.
As a marked police car tried to stop the driver, police say, there was a minor collision between the vehicles. Police originally said there was an exchange of gunfire between an officer and the victim, who they say appears to have been armed with an assault rifle.
A handgun was also found to be within arm’s reach.
The man was shot multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
No one else, including the RCMP officers involved, was injured.
scooper@theprovince.com
twitter.com/scoopercooper
— with a file from Sean Sullivan
© Copyright (c) The Province
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Poli...#ixzz1FcHTm9Xt
| interesting
supposedly the identity of the victim? is known and there will be a story about his past in the Sun soon |
