Escalating feud between rival Calgary gangs took another life Tuesday when an SUV was riddled by gunfire on a busy southeast street, killing one man and seriously wounding two other people inside the vehicle.
The afternoon shooting in Dover Glen renewed the dangers around daylight gang gunplay, as police say bystanders could have been injured or killed by bullets or the careening SUV, which crashed through a fence and into a backyard.
The gunfire broke out as two vehicles headed side by side northbound on 26th Street S. E. just after 2 p. m., said a witness.Brett Barclay was waiting for the bus when he saw a vehicle speed up, then several shots were fired at a silver Dodge Durango, smashing that vehicle's passenger side window.The SUV crossed the centre line, before crashing through a fence and into the backyard of a home on Doverglen Crescent."I turned and I just pretty much froze there and looked at the car," said Barclay, who has been in Calgary a week after arriving from Nova Scotia.Police confirmed the shooting, which is Calgary's fifth homicide of the year, is believed to be gang-related. A violent conflict between the Fresh Off the Boat and FOB Killers that is believed responsible for 20 deaths since 2002.Calling the violence "intolerable," Acting Staff Sgt. Gord Eiriksson of the organized crime operations centre said there could easily have been children in the backyard where the targeted vehicle crashed into the fence.
"The fact that nobody else was seriously hurt or killed, we're fortunate for it," said Eiriksson. "It's very unfortunate that once again these gang members have taken it to the streets and (a person is) dead as a result."Police placed at least 18 pylons, each indicating a casing, along 26 Street.Steve Siddall, a neighbour to the home where the SUV crashed, was feeding his six-month-old daughter when he heard what he said sounded like knocking. He looked outside moments later to see paramedics tending to two men.One of the men was "head to toe covered in blood"and walking to an ambulance with the help of a para-medic. Another man, Siddall said, was taken to the ambulance on a gurney."Nobody's safe around here no more," Siddall said. "It doesn't matter what neighbourhood you live in, it's everywhere.Police later cordoned off an area around a vehicle parked on Cottonwood Crescent, not far from the scene of the shooting. Police say they were investigating whether the vehicle played any part in the gunfire.Tuesday's homicide comes less than two weeks after a gang-related shooting took the lives of three people on New Year's Day at a restaurant in Acadia in the city's southeast. The gunfire killed Sanjeev Mann, reputedly a member of the gang FOB Killers. It also killed bystander Keni Su'a, and another man, Aaron Bendle.No one has been charged in those homicides.
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