Shoot 'em Up, not cool when it's in your backyard

I was asleep on the couch, so I (thankfully) missed all the action. I don't think it was in my parking lot, but there are a few complexes very close here, so it was still practically in my backyard.

Parking lot shooting angers neighbours
Elise Stolte
Edmonton Journal
Thursday, September 13, 2007

EDMONTON - Three men are in hospital after at least a dozen shots were fired in a townhouse parking lot Wednesday night.

At about 8:30 P.M., Krista Sedgwick heard swearing and looked out her bedroom window near 137th Avenue and 38th Street.

She saw two men in their 20s pull guns and start firing on three teenagers. "I threw my two kids off the bed," said the mother of four.

"Two idiots pulled guns and fired at three idiots. I've had enough with this neighbourhood."
When the two men took off running, she locked the doors, gathered her children in the centre of the house and phoned police.

Acting Staff Sgt. Troy Carriere said patrol cars arrived to find one man had been shot through the hand and fled through a stranger's front door. Minutes later, police got another call from a Wal-Mart across the street. Two other men had been shot in the legs and fled there, Carriere said.

Their injuries are not life-threatening. They aren't co-operating with police.
When officers taped off the parking lot, they found more than a dozen casings scattered on the ground and bullet holes in vehicles and in townhouse walls. The bullets appeared to come from a 9-mm pistol, Carriere said.

"We're still trying to find where the rest have landed. ... It was just lucky there were only three victims."

The parking lot was nearly empty at the time, Sedgwick said. But many homes have young children.

Sheri Crowe heard shots, poked her head out the front door and saw a car speed away. She has a four-month-old baby. "I went back inside. I was curious, but not that curious," she said.
When Bisharo Omer heard the shots, "my older one was outside, my 14-year-old. My heart just dropped," she said. "The area is not what it used to be."

© Edmonton Journal 2007