Neighbourhood residents still processing Friday police-involved shooting

The mother of a young family on Avondale Avenue spent more than an hour on the phone with her insurance company Saturday, waiting on hold to report the damage done by a bullet that had hit her front door a day earlier.

The bullet didn’t enter the home, but it did pierce the outer layer of the door’s double-pane glass insert following a police-involved shooting on Friday. A 25-year-old woman was transported to hospital, listed in critical condition.

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“It was a freak event,” said Kristen Simkus, who lives in the home with her husband, two young children, a dog and two cats. She pointed to the suspected path of the bullet.

“We think it richocheted off something because you can see it hit up here, and then the bullet was sitting down here,” she said, noting that investigators had taken the bullet for analysis.

Simkus and the children, ages two and four, were not home when the incident unfolded near the end of their driveway. Her husband was working in the basement.

“No one was at risk,” Simkus said. “We never have anything like this here. Everyone on the street is very tight; we’re always watching out for each other.”

Simkus said she was reassured by police that there was no danger to the public and that the incident had originated elsewhere. She was taking it in stride on Saturday.

Across the street, neighbour Melissa Dickey, who witnessed the incident from the front room of the second storey of her home, was still feeling anxious and “jittery” 24 hours after the fracas. “I’m kinda freaked out,” she said.

Dickey, a federal government employee, was online with a French-language tutor, sitting in front of the window, when she saw people running down the street with guns. She called out to her husband, Peter St. John, who was working in another room.

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St. John ran to the window in time to see a young, male Ottawa Police Service officer in uniform call out to a young woman with long, brown hair to stop. Instead, the woman turned, brandishing what appeared to be a gun, and the officer fired. Dickey and St. John counted four shots. The woman fell to  the street.

“I saw her get shot and drop to the ground,” St. John said. “The officer was obviously very distraught. It was a situation that no officer would ever want to be in.”

Other officers sprang into action, the couple said, giving the woman medical attention and giving support to their colleague. Within moments, an ambulance and several more police vehicles arrived to secure the scene.

Dickey said she heard the woman yelling in anger from the stretcher. “I heard her saying, ‘What the f—? Why did you shoot me?’ and so I thought she was OK.”

The Special Investigations Unit, which investigates serious incidents involving police officers in Ontario, arrived more than an hour later, the couple said. Their investigation of the scene continued until almost 5 a.m. Saturday, thwarting sleep for Dickey.

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A statement issued by the SIU around 6 p.m. Friday said an Ottawa police officer had initiated a traffic stop at about 1:30 p.m. in the area of Churchill Avenue and Avondale Avenue in the Westboro neighbourhood. A woman then left the vehicle and fled on foot, with the officer in pursuit.

“At some point, the officer discharged his firearm and the woman was struck,” the statement added, noting that three SIU investigators and two forensic investigators had been assigned to the case.

On Saturday, friends texted Dickey to make sure she was OK, while neighbours came out of their homes to check on the couple and their dog. They also expressed concern for the condition of the 25-year-old woman and the police officer.

Simkus and other moms in the neighbourhood were trying to determine how to present the news of the shooting to their children.

“Our kids have been relatively unfazed,” Simkus said. “We gave them the facts that someone was in trouble with the police, and they were chased to our house, and they caught the person, but we’re safe now.

“As for the door, we haven’t got into that detail yet. We will probably tell them there was an accident.”

lsaxberg@postmedia.com

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