Residents of 8th Avenue NE in Salmon Arm saw an unusual amount of traffic Tuesday morning as numerous police vehicles converged at a home known to neighbors and police.
One neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained they called the RCMP around 7 am on Tuesday, Sept. 6, after witnessing, and capturing on video, suspicious activity outside the home.
“So I called it in and the cops came over and the first officer that I spoke to recognized someone in this video that I made,” said the neighbor. “He had another officer come and look at it, and as soon as the other guy saw the video, he’s like, ‘That’s him!’ Within 10 minutes there were five cop cars, and cops in the garden stopping people from coming in and out of the house.”
More police vehicles, marked and unmarked, began showing up at the residence. The neighbor said at one point police began putting on tactical vests and grabbing what appeared to be semi-automatic rifles from their vehicles.
In addition to the officers on the ground, who reportedly came from as far as Kamloops and Kelowna, the neighbor said an airplane circled overhead for a couple of hours. Drones and a robot were also used at the house.
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“About an hour later they said they had sent a robot in there with a camera on it to map the place out because the guy they were looking for was involved in a shooting,” said the neighbor. “They called us up a few minutes later and said we’re going to have to evacuate you because we’re going to use gas to get him out of there.”
Around 11 am, the neighbor said a police vehicle left the scene with the person of interest from his video in the back.
The neighbor was also informed by police that “bad things” were found in the house.
The neighbor said the home and its tenant have been a concern for several months, with “all different kinds of people in and out of that house all the time.” They said the house was visited days earlier by police to retrieve an allegedly stolen bicycle. The neighbor empathized with the landlord, who they said is trying to have the tenant evicted.
“You want to evict someone, it’s six months to get a hearing date. It’s crazy.”
The Observer has contacted the RCMP and will provide more information as it becomes available.
lachlan@saobserver.net
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