Vancouver police detectives were grappling with a welcome tide of witness statements Wednesday as they tried to piece together a shooting in the heart of the Cambie Street Village that left a man dead in front of dozens of stunned shoppers, café customers and drivers.
Police summoned a city bus to take about 60 witnesses for interviews after the targeted gang shooting late Tuesday.
"It's fair to say people saw either the event or portions of the event unfold before their eyes," Constable Lindsey Houghton of the Vancouver Police Department said in an interview. "It's outside the normal realm of how many witnesses we usually have for homicides in the city."
At about 10:15 p.m. Tuesday, shots rang out within sight of a Flying Wedge pizza outlet on Cambie Street in the heart of a shopping district that has been finding its groove after the disruptive construction of the Canada Line transit system. Late Wednesday, police identified the shooting victim as Rajinder Soomel, a 35-year-old Surrey resident who was known to police and had gang connections.
In March 2008, a Surrey truck driver named Rajinder Soomel was sentenced to four years in jail after revealing his intentions to have a man killed to undercover RCMP posing as organized crime figures. The man he had arranged to have murdered was a witness in a trial that saw Mr. Soomel's younger brother, Robbie, receive a life's sentence for murder. Local media reported that the elder Mr. Soomel was recently paroled.
In the Cambie Street shooting, police are receiving help from customers, drivers, dog walkers, pedestrians and apartment residents, Constable Houghton said.
"There's a lot of ways one could be a witness in such a busy area at such a time," he said. "This occurred in an area with lots of people and, fortunately, they are being co-operative."
But he said Wednesday it was too soon for police to provide many details on the incident. There are no suspect descriptions, nor information on how many suspects there might be, he said.
The victim ended up dead on the pavement within metres of the eateries and the venerable Park Theatre, where moviegoers were midway through a screening of Matt Damon's new movie, The Informant! , when the shooting occurred.
Theatre owner Leonard Schein, who sits on the board of directors of the Cambie Village Business Association, said the incident was an unsettling first for the area in the 19 years he has owned the Park.
"Anybody who is in the area doesn't like the fact that there is a shooting in their area, but the shootings are not a regular thing, and they are obviously targeted," Mr. Schein said.
"You worry about innocent people being nearby any of these targeted shootings, but it's not something we expect to happen for another 19 years."
The incident was a reminder that no area of the Lower Mainland appears immune from a wave of gang violence. Recent months have seen numerous shootings, prompting international media ranging from the British Broadcasting Corp. to The Economist magazine to highlight the region's propensity for gang violence as the 2010 Winter Olympics loom.
Constable Houghton noted that the shooting was the 18th homicide of 2009, and that there were 14 at the same time last year.
"We are only four homicides above where we were last year despite having a gang war in our midst."
He said police were doing their best to deal with gang warfare.
"People would be naive thinking that by making arrests and announcing charges against a number of people, we would be immune from future gang violence," he said.
Solicitor-General Kash Heed suggested "these unfortunate incidents" are going to continue until police can get ahead of the problem.
"We have to do whatever we can to prevent them from happening, and when they happen, we have to do whatever we can to catch the perpetrators involved," he said.
Ian Bailey