A man was taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries after a shooting in Ottawa’s ByWard Market Wednesday.
A man was taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries after a shooting in Ottawa’s ByWard Market Wednesday. Ottawa police Duty Insp. Brian Samuel said officers responded to a call about gunshots in the area shortly before 1 p.m. and found one person suffering from a gunshot wound.
The police service’s guns and gangs unit is investigating, Samuel said. No arrests have been announced as of 2:30 p.m. York Street between Dalhousie and Cumberland was closed after the shooting, with a heavy police presence on the block into the afternoon.
Bill McBurney has lived at the corner of York and Cumberland for over 40 years, and says criminal activity in his neighbourhood is on the rise, to the point that he’s concerned about keeping tenants in his townhouse.
“It’s just getting too crazy for people on this street,” he said, just steps away from the taped-off crime scene. “It doesn’t matter if it’s day or night.”
His home was broken into about a month ago, a patio window smashed and a bike stolen while he was at home in bed, McBurney said. More recently, his garden shed was smashed and ransacked. He sometimes finds needles in his back alleyway.
Despite it all, though, McBurney says he’s in for the long haul. “I pay a lot of taxes,” he said, “but I don’t get my money’s worth.” Pat Phythian owns Frou Frou by Pat, a boutique near where the shooting took place. Like McBurney, she says she’s “fed up” with the uptick in crime in the neighbourhood she calls home.
In late September, two Halton Regional Police Officers were assaulted in the ByWard Market in the early hours of a weekend morning. In June, a shooting injured four people who were left with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. Ottawa Police have said they will open a “neighbourhood operations centre” in the ByWard Market.
“My business is here, I live right there,” Phythian said, gesturing down the block. “I love the market, I love it. And I’m so sad. What’s going on? A daytime shooting? Give me a break.”
Fellow business owner Marilyn Zimd owns a nearby jewelry store, Marigold Jewellery and Designs, and says she hopes Wednesday’s shooting is a wake-up call for local politicians. The ByWard Market, she said, should be a gem of the city’s tourist attractions.
“People will not want to come to Ottawa, stay at hotels, when there’s homicides going on right outside the doors,” she said. “Something’s got to give here.”