Two men dead in ‘targeted’ shooting in Burnaby

Two men are dead after shots were fired in the lobby of a busy Burnaby hotel in what police are describing as a "targeted" shooting.

"It doesn't appear to be a random act," Sergeant Jennifer Pound of the regional homicide unit said on Monday as police began investigating the shooting at the Executive Hotel on Lougheed Highway.

No bystanders were injured, but the spokeswoman for the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said the incident could have been catastropic.

"It's a busy hotel. There were definitely people around who had the potential to sustain injury or lose their lives," she said.

"We're dealing with a high-traffic time of day and especially when you're dealing with a hotel such as this chain, there are people coming in and out of that hotel. To see this happening in broad daylight, it's bold and it's callous and it speaks to the selfishness and senselessness of this type of crime."

That said, she noted the timing and location of the crime mean that police have a few witnesses to help with the investigation.

Sgt. Pound declined comment on media reports that the victims were a gang member and his bodyguard, indicating only they were an Indo-Canadian male and a Caucasian male.

On Tuesday, Sgt. Pound tweeted that the victims were Sukh Dahk and Thomas Mantel.

At about 11:30 a.m., she said, Burnaby RCMP recieved 911 calls from the area, and officers arrived to find the two men suffering gunshot wounds at the boutique hotel. Despite first-aid efforts, both men died at the scene.

She said it was a chaotic situation and police are still trying to assemble a chronology of events to help with their investigation.

"We have our working theories like we normally do when we pull up to a new investigation, however, a lot of those theories change and shift with the retrieval of evidence," she said.