Two people are dead and one person is in hospital as a result of a shooting in south Edmonton over the noon hour on Monday.
Emergency crews were called to a residential area at Cavanagh Boulevard and 30 Avenue SW around noon, according to the Edmonton Police Service.
“There are no immediate concerns for public safety at this time and responding officers have secured the scene. EPS homicide investigators will be leading this investigation,” an EPS spokesperson said in an email to media at 1:24 p.m.
The family of one of the victims has identified him to CTV News Edmonton as Buta Singh Gill, owner of Edmonton-based Gill Built Homes.
At least 50 people gathered at the scene on Monday afternoon, most of them members of the South Asian home-building community.
Several people in the group could be seen crying.
‘There’s a shooter, you need to run’
A woman who says she witnessed the shooting as she was driving home described the scene to CTV News Edmonton.
Lindsay Hilton said she saw a man walking down Cavanagh Boulevard wearing construction attire. She says a black Nissan car pulled out of a nearby construction site, did a U-turn, drove up behind the man and bumped him.
“The man in the construction vest had his gun out, pointed at the car and shot once into the driver’s side window, then I went right around the corner because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she told CTV News Edmonton.” I heard two more gunshots following.”
Hilton says she pulled over and called 911, adding she feels traumatized by the situation.
“I have had moments of breaking down like this into tears because it’s just something I think that you just don’t expect to see in broad daylight,” she said.
“It just looked like another interaction of guys stopping to talk at the construction site, so when I saw him pull that gun and shoot, it just took me a minute even to put together what happened.”
Another woman told CTV News Edmonton she was walking with her children in the stroller when she heard gunshots.
“We were approaching the construction site and we kind of heard probably three or four shots. I thought it was a nail gun at first because it’s a construction site,” she said.
“But then we saw some of the guys, some of the construction workers start running away. One of them kind of came towards me and flagged me down, and he just told me, ‘You can’t go over there. There’s a shooter, you need to run the other way!'”
Former Edmonton city councillor and former EPS member Mohinder Banga said he came to the scene after hearing Gill had been killed in the shooting.
“He was such a nice person, and he would jump in to help people whenever they needed help and without looking for anything in return. That was his quality,” he said.
“Obviously, you can see all the people here, they’re all well-wishers and the community is in shock right now.”
No further details have been provided by police.
With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nav Sangha