Neighbours react to Erin Woods death
Posted Jun 11, 2011 9:10 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The southeast community of Erin Woods is reacting to the death of man who was shot by police.
Officers were responding to a call about welfare in the 200 block of Erin Meadows Close Friday evening, when the 40-year-old man allegedly came at the officers with a knife.
One of the two officers shot the man several times.
Like many of her neighbours, Wendy Herrell was at home when she heard shots ring out.
“We heard ‘boom, boom, boom.’ I was on the top level, my husband was on the third level,” she says. “He thought I was pounding. He came up the stairs to see what was going on. By this time I heard sirens.”
She says she ran to the door and within seconds, officers were converging on a nearby home.
“Then all hell broke loose. There were cops everywhere,” she says.
She adds a group of people were hauled out of the home and the officer was led away from the scene.
“All of a sudden, like all the cops went in and they brought at least a dozen people out and everybody was screaming and crying and then all we heard was ‘You shot my dad, you killed my dad,” she says.
Herrell says officers quickly escorted one of their own away from the scene.
“I can’t even imagine what was going through that fellow’s mind,” she says. “They were getting him out of here. Like, he’d just shot and killed somebody. I wouldn’t be able to deal with that either.”
Bill Criss lives in the home next to the one the man was shot at and says he came home to chaos.
“I saw an ambulance come out and I saw one of the other neighbours that told me our neighbour had been shot and they’d been in the back yard when all the shooting had started,” he says.
He adds the people who lived in the home would throw large parties.
“Other than their partying and loud music late at night, they’re not disruptive to the neighbours or whatever and they’d be apologetic, turn down the music or whatever but it’s alot of times that we had to go talk to them,” he says.
Criss says he noticed violent outbursts at the home on a couple of occasions.
Police Chief Rick Hanson says the man was known to police and that officers had very little time to react when he came out of the home holding the knife.
“I can tell you this,” says Hanson. “Our officers arrived at a call that was a 911 hang-up, where there were clear threats being made in the background and when our officers got there it was apparent that this person was acting in a very threatening manner and took action that was appropriate under the circumstances.”
Some neighbours say the officer fired his weapon three times, others say four or even five.
Hanson says the two officers at the scene were put on mandatory administrative leave for at least 30 days.
One of the officers has been with the police force for three years, and the other two years. It’s not clear which one fired the weapon.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team is investigating the shooting.
