Woman killed, man injured amid rising gun violence in Calgary & More Latest News Here – Up Jobs

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A woman is dead and a man clinging to life Thursday after they were shot in the city’s southwest, the latest incident in a surge of gun violence in Calgary.

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At about 8:20 a.m., police were called to the 100 block of Everwoods Crt. S.W. where they found two gunshot victims in a dark brown Bentley sedan parked in a driveway.

“The woman was declared deceased on scene, while the man was transported to hospital in life-threatening condition,” city police said in a press release.

The car was sitting in a neighbours’ driveway three doors down from the victims’ home at the time of the shooting.

Blood was smeared on the driveway hours after the shooting.

None of several neighbours interviewed said they heard gunshots or saw any assailants, but one woman who lives nearby said she heard a man screaming after the shooting and ran to help.

“I saw a man in his car covered in blood – he was screaming…she wasn’t moving when I saw her,” said the neighbour, who chose anonymity.

“I brought a towel out and one of the other neighbours was doing chest compressions…he kept scream ‘I’ve been shot.’”

The woman and next-door neighbour Segun Oshile said the couple who they described to be in their 30s had lived on the quiet cul de sac for years and were pleasant and friendly.

“They’re lovely people, some of the best people in the neighbourhood, fun to be with and ready to lend a hand,” said Oshile, adding he’d just made small talk with the male shooting victim the previous day.

“My wife and his wife were very close – my wife is in shock right now.”

He called the incident “a wake-up call” suggesting such shootings can happen anywhere in the city.

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Some of the nearby homes, including the house directly behind where the homicide occurred, are equipped with surveillance cameras.

When the vehicle was towed away five hours after the shooting, the driver’s side window was partly rolled down and there wasn’t any apparent damage to the car.

It’s the latest shooting in a city increasingly rocked by gunplay this year.

On Wednesday, police said that so far this year, there have been 91 shootings in Calgary – just five short of the city’s total of 96 in all of 2021. By this time last year, there had been 52 shootings in the city.

But they also said less than 25 per cent of those shootings were gang or organized crime-related, with most of them involving personal disputes, road rage, drugs or accidental discharge.

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Police also announced they’ve laid 120 charges against nine people and seized multiple firearms in investigations they say are related to organized crime and a series of shootings.

That involved the discovery by airport security of a Glock handgun inside a piece of luggage at the Calgary International Airport on July 17.

Last May, Deputy Chief Paul Cook told the Calgary Police Commission the risks of death or imprisonment are proving to be weak deterrents in controlling gunplay in Calgary.

“I can tell you the vast majority of the people we deal with, those consequences don’t matter to them,” he said.

“(They think) they’re better to be caught with a gun by police than to be without a gun and come across one of their rivals.”

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Poorly-enforced existing laws governing firearms, particularly handguns that are illegally possessed, stored and used, are contributing to the rising problem, said Cook.

Police rely on members of the public who are aware of the presence of guns in the community to discourage and deter their use while also alerting police, he said.

The rising tide of shootings in Calgary and elsewhere in Canada mirrors what’s been happening in the U.S. and is acutely affected by handguns smuggled over the border from that country, said Mount Royal University criminologist Doug King.

“We’re not going to see a downturn (in shootings), we’re just going to see it increase more and more until we get a handle on the increase in illegal importation,” he said.

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He noted police in Toronto, which has been plagued in recent years by rising gunplay, have said 85 per cent of handguns used in crimes were illegally possessed and procured.

But he said many firearms are also spirited into Canada from Asia.

“When a cargo ship comes into Vancouver, only five per cent of the containers are searched – that five per cent is the price of doing business (for smugglers),” said King.

The federal government recently announced a temporary ban on the import of handguns into Canada, set to come into effect Friday. The move is meant as a stopgap before politicians in Parliament debate permanent legislation on a handgun freeze this fall.

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King said Ottawa’s plans to beef up firearms interdiction at the country’s borders is a good step, but added its plan to halt the sale of handguns won’t have much of an immediate impact on shooting rates.

“These firearms aren’t registered and the people using them are criminals,” he said.

Some of the heightened gunplay, he said, can be attributed to rising levels of hate, conflict and domestic violence.

That, combined with the easy availability of illegal handguns leads to their quick use, he said.

“For many people in Canada and the U.S., having a firearm is a status symbol and young people are very susceptible to that,” said King.

He said better funding of police investigative abilities and border interdiction are key to reducing gun violence that takes a long-lasting toll not just on its immediate victims but those living near them.

“It increases the fear of crime (on their street) – it never goes back to zero,” said King.

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Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn