Burnaby police-involved shooting injures 1 man
Dramatic video of multiple gun shots posted to YouTube by building resident
A man is in hospital recovering from injuries sustained when police opened fire near the Lougheed Mall in Burnaby Friday.
Witnesses described hearing gunfire in the parking lot outside their building in the 9300 block of Salish Court around 8 p.m. PT. Friday.
A resident of the building taped the shooting and posted the video to YouTube. Rapid succession gunfire can be heard on the tape, followed by a voice yelling over and over, "Drop the gun. Drop the gun," and then: "Don't move. Don't move."
Residents say they were surprised to hear so many shots.
"There was a couple of single shots and then rapid fire, maybe eight of ten or fifteen shots, probably an automatic gun whatever," said Les Bozso, who had just returned home from work to his apartment.
"Everything's quiet. Five minutes later I come down the side stairs here and there's police cars all over so when I run over next door, heard the shooting and there's a guy laying on the parking lot behind this building. So I don't know really what happened."
The Independent Investigations Office, which provides civilian oversight of serious police incidents, is investigating what it confirmed in a news release was a police-involved shooting.
It said Burnaby RCMP officers responded to a complaint of a distressed man with a gun. When police found the suspect, he allegedly threatened himself and then the officers.
Police fired their weapons and the man was shot, said the IIO. He was taken to hospital for medical treatment and is expected to survive. No officers were injured.
Bozso says the shooting was unnerving.
"Like you don't want something like that to happen here," he said. It's scary."
The IIO wouldn't confirm the number of shots fired or comment on the YouTube video.
"First of all we have to confirm that the video is accurate of that incident," said IIO spokesman Ralph Krenze.
"It seems obvious to folks, but that's the object of our investigation and it will be considered as another piece of evidence in a fulsome investigation of the incident."
The Burnaby RCMP said it would run its own investigation into the actions of the man and any other persons involved prior to the incident
IIO investigators continue to work the case today, determining which officers were involved, identifying witnesses and seizing physical evidence.
They're asking anyone with information to come forward.
Krenze says the IIO has investigated eight officer-involved shootings since Sept. 2014.