ONOWAY - A call about a domestic disturbance at a small apartment building in Onoway escalated quickly on Wednesday evening, and ended with RCMP shooting and killing a 49-year-old man inside the suite.
The shooting happened at about 7:30 p.m., after two officers from the Stony Plain RCMP detachment arrived at 5107 Lac Ste. Anne Trail. Clif Purvis, executive director of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, said numerous shots were fired, and both officers who were at the scene are believed to have discharged their pistols.
The name of the dead man is not yet being released by police.
Little information is being released about the two officers, except that both are male, and one has been an RCMP officer for about three years.
Purvis said a machete and knife were found at the scene, but he could not comment on whether the man had been holding them before he was shot.
Two other people inside the residence at the time were not injured.
Apartment building resident Kevin Koski said he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, but knew that something had happened when police began arriving at the scene.
“I just looked and saw police cars outside, and all of a sudden there was a whole bunch of them,” Koski said, adding there were at least 17 police vehicles outside the building.
He said seeing police at the building is not unusual, “but nothing like this. Not even close.”
The building is a modest three-storey walk-up. Koski said there are numerous children living in the building, and there is often noise and people coming and going.
Tricycles are chained to a bicycle rack in back yard, and there is a swing hanging on an evergreen tree in the backyard.
The shooting is a significant event in the quiet town of about 850, and a steady stream of onlookers drove by the apartment building on Thursday, including teens from a nearby school on their lunch break. Onoway is located about an hour’s drive northwest of Edmonton
As is the case with any police-involved shooting in the province, investigation has been turned over to ASIRT to determine whether the shooting was lawful and justified.
Purvis said he couldn’t comment on the events that led to the shooting, or whether police had responded to the suite in the past.
He said a number of civilian witnesses have been identified, and will be interviewed as part of the investigation.
An autopsy has been scheduled for Friday morning.
© Shaw Media Inc., 2012. All rights reserved.