Woman killed, child hurt at apartment in Vancouver

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – It was a gruesome scene at an East Vancouver apartment Monday morning after a women was killed, a little girl hurt and a man was shot by police.

Police were called to the building at Kingsway and Joyce around 10:30 a.m. after they received reports of a small child crying, a man yelling, and blood on the walls.

When officers arrived, the suspect confronted them with a knife. “The officers gave him some commands and ended up firing their weapons. The man was shot, he was taken to hospital,” says Constable Brian Montague.

He says the woman in the apartment had several injuries and was declared dead at the scene but there’s not confirmation on how she died.

A young girl, believed to be about five or six years old, was taken to hospital with injuries.

Ron lives across the hallway but only his girlfriend was home at the time and she made the 9-1-1 call. “She just said she saw blood, she didn’t say where, whether it was the walls or carpets. I just told her to call the cops.”

“I was sitting inside, and then all of sudden, the postman came running inside,” says the man who owns a shop underneath the apartment building where the shooting took place. “‘There’s a shooting in your building,’ [said the postman]. We came running outside, saw the police at the back, front, everything,” he says.

According to witnesses, the 33-year-old man who was shot by police lives at the apartment with his mother, with some reporting he suffers from a mental illness. None of that has been confirmed by police though.

The VPD Homicide Unit is investigating the death of the woman. Since this was is a police-involved shooting, the Independent Investigations Office has also been called in.