Residents “should feel safe in their city,” despite the fact homicides have happened on both sides of Halifax Harbour already this week, a police spokesman said Wednesday.
“We’re going to work to ensure that they do (feel safe),” said Const. Brian Palmeter of Halifax Regional Police. He said investigators are hard at work trying to solve two separate murders — the body of a 36-year-old woman was found by a north end Halifax school Monday and a 33-year-old man turned up dead at a Dartmouth rooming house Tuesday night.
Police haven’t said how either victim was killed, but Palmeter did say the two deaths aren’t related.
As of Wednesday, he said investigators still didn’t know who was behind Monday’s murder of Tanya Jean Brooks of Halifax, who is “known to police,” but officers have arrested a 59-year-old Dartmouth man in relation to Tuesday’s homicide.
That suspect’s name hasn’t been released because he hasn’t been charged, and the victim’s name was also withheld while an autopsy was underway, Palmeter said.
Police said in relation to Tuesday’s murder, beat officers were called to 214 Portland Street, at the corner of Maitland Street, just before 9 p.m. to check on someone who was thought to be injured. They instead found the man’s body inside the two-storey, blue-sided house, which area residents call “a crack house.”
“We have responded there for calls . . . numerous times,” Const. Palmeter confirmed. “They’ve ranged from things such as noise complaints to alcohol-related offences to disturbances.”
Police don’t consider the murder a random act, he said, adding “we don’t believe at this time that there’s a threat to the surrounding community.”
Dave Goyetche of Newcastle Drive said the homicide that happened next door to his house “doesn’t surprise me.”
“They’re the ones that fall through the cracks,” he said of his neighbours. “They’re getting out of prison, or getting out of the Nova Scotia hospital wards, and they’ve got to live somewhere, and that’s the place they go.”
– with notes from Geoff Davies
