It wasn’t until the next morning that the owner of a pickup realized there were four bullet holes in the side of his truck.
He had gone downtown to spend a friendly evening with the boys and parked in front of the realty office at the corner of 4th Avenue and Vancouver Street.
“At first I looked around my neighbourhood and thought ‘what had I done to anger people?’” the truck owner said when he reached out to The Citizen.
He wishes to remain anonymous.
“When I realized there were bullet holes in my truck the next morning I called police and they dispatched a very nice constable up here,” he said.
“He was looking at the bullet holes and I said ‘the more I think about this, the more I think this took place downtown last night’ and he immediately lit up and said ‘we had a shooting at Fourth and Vancouver’ and I said ‘that’s exactly where this truck was parked’. What is so brazen about this is that you know the location - I could throw a rock and hit the police station.”
Police sent out a recent press release Monday, Jan. 20 saying they are investigating a shooting that happened overnight between Thursday, Jan. 16 and Friday, Jan. 17 at a commercial building on the 1600 block of Fourth Avenue.
Staff at the business called Prince George RCMP when they arrived Friday morning and found signs of the shooting. Police were told the last person left the building at about 9 p.m. Thursday and the building was empty until 6 a.m. Friday. A truck parked nearby, one unrelated to the business, was hit by a shot during the incident, police said at the time. That's the pickup in question. It was parked there from 7:15 to 9 p.m.
The owner said the request the Prince George RCMP put out has the time wrong because it says "police ask anyone in the area between 9 p.m. Thursday and 6 a.m. Friday who may have witnessed anything unusual in the area, which is between Victoria and Winnipeg streets, or may have dash camera or video surveillance to call the non-emergency line at 250-561-3300."
“I phoned the police, leaving messages, etc. and I’m not getting anywhere – if they’re going to try to catch anybody the police should at least get the right time,” the truck owner told The Citizen. “So I thought I would leave this to you so you could work your magic.”
But there’s more to this story than just bullet holes in a truck.
This is somebody’s vehicle and the what-ifs inevitably crop up when thinking about the impact a shot-up pickup could have had under different circumstances. And as any victim would, this truck’s 78-year-old owner went there.
“You know, my grandchildren rode in that truck, my dog sits in that seat,” he said. “My grandchildren are older now but I had flashbacks when I saw this. I go out with my dog every day, twice a day, and I leave my dog sitting in the backseat and you know, a dog is just as much a part of the family as anybody else.”
A bullet lodged in his crew cab driver’s side back door, with three more in a row along the truck box, and they are all evenly spaced. He heard there were eight to 10 bullets found in the building, too, he said.
“My immediate reaction was ‘what the hell’,” the truck owner said. “And then there was a delayed reaction where it was upsetting for all of us here and it’s been more traumatic for my wife.”
He and his wife have lived in Prince George for 20 years and they love it here, he said.
“We’re from the Lower Mainland so this type of thing is not uncommon in the sense that it would happen down the road, but never to us,” the truck owner said.
“We love the downtown. We go to the coffee shop down on 4th at least once a week. I buy all my clothes at Jim’s Clothes Closet all in that stretch. We love the sushi place on the corner. We go to the market on the weekends. I think we still will go but we’ll be a little bit more cautious, is the way I would put it. I’m not going to let this change my life. I’ll probably react a little bit quicker to a backfire than anyone else in the neighbourhood but I’m not going to let it change me.”
