Last night, there was gunfire in our neighbourhood - just down at the end of my block.
On Thursday night, I was out with some friends at a pub in Gastown. Towards the end of the evening, I phoned my wife at home, and she excitedly told me the following:
She was driving along Eighth avenue near Nanaimo, when a Policeman stopped her. He asked her where she was going, and she asked him what was going on.
"Someone is playing with guns" he replied. She noticed that pedestrians were being stopped and asked to go another way as well.
Near the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Nanaimo, she saw numerous police cars and a paddy wagon. Curious people were milling around, trying to get a look or figure out what was going on.
The cop said he wanted to check her car for any holes. When he had decided she was bullet-free, he said she could go past.
So, she told me to be extra careful coming home. We both knew that I would be walking by the scene on my way home from the Commercial Skytrain station.
When I got to Garden Drive and Broadway (one block west of Nanaimo), I saw two uniformed officers out front of a house on Garden drive, talking to someone, and writing things down. They must have been out there canvassing the neighbourhood for hours.
On the radio news the next morning, the announcer said that there were "dozens of shell casings" on the ground near the incident, and that up to twelve people were involved. Nobody was killed or wounded. Five people were in custody. Few were cooperating with investigators.
The radio report said that the gunfire had happened out front of a chinese restaurant. It was actually a Vietnamese restaurant, next to "V-Net Computers", according to the CTV news photo.
There had also been gunfire reported outside the "Golden Phoenix", a Chinese restaurant across the street a number of months ago. This all must be connected to Asian gangs or something.
