The gun violence in the Lower Mainland shows no signs of abating with another daylight shooting leaving one man dead and another injured in South Vancouver.
Nazreen Dean said her teenage brothers were watching TV in their home near Fraser Street and 53rd Avenue yesterday afternoon when two men banged on the door looking for someone named Azim.
“We are convinced we don’t know those guys,” Dean said, adding her brother told the men no one by that name lived there.
It’s unclear at what point her 19-year-old brother, Aleem Mohammed was shot and injured. Dean said that her other brother, Amir Mohammed, chased the gunmen and wrestled with one of the men. That assailant wound up dead and Amir was taken away in handcuffs.
The second suspect ran away.
Nakib Ahmed has lived in the neighbourhood for six years and said it was “surreal” to come home and see the street blocked off with police tape.
“I have a five-year-old,” he said. “This is unimaginable. This is a residential area. Every couple blocks, churches and schools.”
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson joined police at the scene and said he’s “horrified” by the violence.
“We are hundreds and hundreds of officers short of what the other big cities in Canada have to combat gang crime,” Robertson said.
“How many killings does it take for us to deal with gang killings as a metro police force?”
Bal Kaur, a legal assistant who organized an anti-gang task force last year, happened upon the scene as she was driving by.
“You can’t keep blaming the government (for the violence),” she said. “It’s about parents taking accountability and opening their eyes. You can’t walk around with blinders on.”
