Residents, workers in Downtown Eastside concerned after spate of shootings
Credit to Author: Gordon McIntyre| Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2019 01:59:12 +0000
Vancouver police fear increasing gang violence in the Downtown Eastside after three shootings within 15 hours, beginning a little after 3:30 p.m. on Sunday and ending around 6:30 a.m. on Monday.
Detectives from VPD’s major-crime unit believe the shootings were targeted.
“These shootings, in such a short time frame, highlight the escalating violence in the Downtown Eastside,” Deputy Chief Const. Howard Chow said Monday. “Criminals are looking to take advantage of the current situation and are putting vulnerable people at risk.”
Emergency calls to Oppenheimer Park between June and August increased by 87 per cent from a year ago, Chow had said earlier, with sex assaults, shootings, stabbings and swarmings a continuing risk at the tent city that sprung up this summer.
Near the scene of the second shooting at Abbott Mansion at 404 Abbott St. on Sunday, longtime laundromat and dry-cleaning owner/operator Harry Kim said he’s never seen violence as bad as it is now.
“I’ve been here for 25 years,” Kim said. “Almost every day there has usually been a problem, but it’s a lot worse now. There used to be stabbings, people beat up. Now guns.”
His store is next door to the mansion, which he said has 72 rooms and about 80 people living on four floors.
Staff at the SRO, which, according to its website, provides “safe, affordable housing and supporting programs that enhance the lives of people in need,” declined to comment. The neighbour on the other side is the non-governmental Pacific Oak Clinic, an opioid addiction therapy centre. Not being opened on weekends, staff weren’t around during the shootings.
But the three front-line support workers present Monday said they’ve noticed a swell of anger in the DTES.
“Basically, there is no clean drug supply,” Jenn Dame said. “People are being poisoned and they’re not taking any more drugs than they used to.”
She disagreed that the gun violence is a sign of things to come, saying concealed weapons remain the choice of people settling scores.
“The way people will settle disagreements is through other measures, which are just as easy to conceal (as knives),” she said. “They use hotshots (a heroin-filled syringe), they jab a needle of heroin into somebody’s arm and it looks like a run-of-the-mill (overdose).
“So we don’t know the true scope (of the violence).”
Three shootings in less than a day is extremely unusual, said Union Gospel Mission spokesman Jeremy Hunka.
“A lot of our guests are scared,” he said. “Vulnerable people like our guests could be caught up in the crossfire and get hurt through no fault of their own. There are 10,000 people in the Downtown Eastside and they’re most at risk because there’s nothing between them and a violent eruption except for a tent.”
The victims in the shooting were a 50-year-old Surrey man, the first victim, who is in hospital with serious injuries; a 28-year-old Langley man and a 25-year-old Surrey man injured in the second shooting, who were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries; and Monday morning’s victim, a 50-year-old Vancouver man who suffered serious injuries.
A man standing outside the Country Music Pub, below where Sunday evening’s shooting took place, said he has been living a block away on Hastings Street for 16 years.
“I couldn’t believe I woke up this morning and came here to find out there had been a shooting here and two others,” the man, who gave his name only as Chris, said. “Holy f–k man, what’s going wrong with this world?”
No arrests had been made as of Monday evening.