Canada: two dead in shootings near Vancouver

Two people were killed and two others injured in a series of shootings Monday morning in a town in western Canada, police said. The shooter was shot.

‘I can confirm that four people were shot by what is believed to be a sniper,’ the Langley city police chief said. Two did not survive, he said, and one injured woman is in “critical condition”.

“The identification of the victims and the suspect is in progress and we are trying to assess the link between them,” added the police, who refuse to reveal the identity of the people. According to Canadian media, the man may have targeted homeless people.

An alert message had been broadcast around 6:15 a.m. local time (3:15 p.m. in Switzerland) to the population, mentioning “several crime scenes in the city center of Langley”, a city of 130,000 inhabitants located regarding forty kilometers north of southeast of Vancouver, British Columbia.

‘National arms freeze’

The authorities indicated in this message to have had an “interaction with a suspect without knowing for the moment if others were involved”. A second alert was sent an hour later, explaining that the suspect “was no longer a threat” and once more asking the public to stay away.

The initial alert message described a Caucasian man, with dark hair, wearing a brown jumpsuit and a blue and green t-shirt with a red logo on the right sleeve.

In April 2020, a gunman disguised as a police officer killed 22 people in Nova Scotia, in the east of the country, the worst killing recorded in Canada.

Although less affected than its American neighbor by the shootings, Canada announced in June a plan for a ‘national freeze on the possession of handguns’.

/ATS