Community safety co-ordinator gets gun shoved in face 24 hours before stumbling across homicide scene

Shane Partridge started his Canada Day long weekend by having a sawed-off shotgun shoved in his face while sitting in his truck at Saskatoon's Pleasant Hill Park.

Twenty-four hours later, he drove his truck around a corner near St. Paul's Hospital and came across police taping off a crime scene with the city's seventh homicide victim of the year lying in an alley.

He finished off the weekend by returning to work Tuesday. That's when police closed off the street in front of his office on Avenue V South and called in their armoured rescue truck to deal with a weapons call.

It's all too much for the former gang member and community advocate. 

"We're all sick and tired of this and we're all looking for our leadership to stand up," he said in an interview Wednesday.

"I'm glad elections are coming up because that's going to show who's really going to be involved in the community and who's going to be set to lead us."

'He pumped it, yes. Didn't go off.'

Partridge works with Str8 Up, the Saskatoon gang diversion group, and is also the community safety co-ordinator for the Pleasant Hill Community Association.

Early Saturday morning, he and another man were parked in Partridge's truck in Pleasant Hill Park. They were providing security for a gospel group that had left its revival tent and gear set up overnight.

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Around 2 a.m. CST, he says, they heard a commotion coming from another part of the park. It didn't seem out of the ordinary, given it was a warm summer night.

Then he noticed the two men walking toward his truck. Partridge thought nothing of it, until a man dressed head-to-toe in red pulled out the sawed-off shotgun.

"It was a shotgun, yeah. I mean it was in our face, it was a sawed-off shotgun. He pumped it, yes. Didn't go off," he said.

Bear spray attack

Partridge says the man pumped it three times, and it failed to fire each time. He remembers seeing the man's eyes.

"Empty. He wasn't there, he was messed up."

The men moved along, leaving Partridge and his partner stunned in the truck. Moments later, the two men kicked in the door of a house, hosed down the people inside with bear spray and threatened them with the shotgun, and then kept on moving.

Police said in a news release that they're investigating.

'Swept under the rug'

Partridge says it's time for politicians and police to step up and really help the people in Pleasant Hill. He says that officials are downplaying what's happening in the core neighbourhood.

Partridge helped organize an emergency meeting in March after a homicide and a series of shootings. Police and politicians attended, but he says nothing of note has happened since to get guns and methamphetamine off the streets.

"I think that all these violent crimes that are happening in our community, to our community residents, against each other, is being swept under the rug," he said.

"We sound like a broken record. The community has said this over and over and over again and over and over again we get the same answers. Nothing ever happens. It calms down, and leadership just hopes that we forget about it."