Vancouver paramedics and police shot at with pellet gun: VPD
Posted January 9, 2023 12:12 pm.
A man is in custody after members of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) and paramedics were shot at with a pellet gun from the window of a Downtown Eastside building on Sunday night.
Police say around 11 p.m., BC Ambulance Service paramedics were in the lane behind the Carnegie Centre near Main Street and Hastings Street when the shots were fired. First responders, as well as an ambulance, were hit, police say.
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The department says one officer was shot “several times” and suffered minor injuries.
Police searched the Maple Hotel on East Hastings Street where they found a suspect who is believed to have fired the shots. A 45-year-old man has been arrested.
According to the VPD, the man was already on bail for an unrelated incident and was previously wanted province-wide for theft.
He is now in custody and faces charges for assaulting police and paramedics, possession of a weapon, and breaching bail conditions.
VPD investigates multiple ‘serious’ incidents over weekend
The pellet gun incident is one of many serious ones that happened in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside over the weekend, the VPD says.
On Friday night, police say a 69-year-old man was injured when he was hit in the head with an object from behind.
The victim, whom police say uses a motorized scooter, was said to have been trying to navigate the sidewalk when a confrontation happened. A suspect has not yet been identified by police.
Then, on Saturday morning, police say the window of a transit bus was shattered after it was hit with a “projectile” in the Downtown Eastside.
Nobody was hurt in the incident, with VPD and Metro Vancouver Transit Police working together in the investigation.
