Fallout of drive-by shooting affects neighbourhood

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Neighbours of the home that was the target of a drive-by shooting Friday morning are concerned about their safety following the incident.

According to the Fort St. John RCMP detachment, frontline police officers attended the scene on the 8600 block of 74th Street and found “numerous suspected bullet holes” in the building and vehicle in front of it. 

A woman who lives on the street where the shooting took place spoke to Energeticcity.ca anonymously due to safety concerns. Although no one was injured during the shooting, the woman says residents are shaken up.

She says there have been issues with the tenants in the past, but she felt safe in the family-filled neighbourhood until the morning the drive-by occurred.

“My kids like playing in my driveway, scooting around on their bikes, and now I’m like, holy, I can’t even feel comfortable with my kids going out in front of our house anymore. I’m going to feel anxious every time.”

Prior to the shooting, an ongoing issue with the tenants was about the trash kept in their driveway and yard, according to the resident.

“They’ve cleaned it up a bit, but in the past, they’ve had lots and lots of garbage in their driveway,” she said.

She says they also had unattended fires on their front lawn and will often be up in the middle of the night making noise in their driveway. The police have been to the property many times over the last couple of years, according to the neighbour. 

“I myself have reported them, between the RCMP and bylaw, five times at least,” she said.

Energeticcity.ca staff followed up with Constable Chad Neustaeter, media relations officer for the Fort St. John RCMP, who confirmed the tenants are known to the police.

Neustaeter says police attended the residence on the evening of March 22nd but said it was not firearms related.

The landlord of the residence, who wished to remain anonymous for safety reasons, said the building’s owner hired her to help remove the tenants from the property, as their lease was up in May 2022. There were also issues with the tenants not paying rent before and after the lease agreement ended.

“Every month, it was a promise, ‘we’ll get you your money soon,’” the landlord explained.

On top of the rent issues, there were other reasons the landlords wanted them out.

The landlord said the tenants had received multiple tickets from bylaw. A clean-up order issued by bylaw in July 2021 said their yard was “full of old gym equipment, household items, furniture and furniture parts, appliances, garden tools, garbage bags of clothing and a lot of miscellaneous refuse.”

The landlord sent Energeticcity.ca the initial eviction notice issued on May 1st, 2022, the first and third eviction notices, where they were told to leave by July 14th, 2022, and again on August 5th, 2022.

The third time she gave the tenants an eviction notice in August, they disputed it.

“Once they disputed, I was no longer able to try to evict him,” the landlord said.

“I had to wait for the court date, which was January of 2023. So from August to January, I had to basically sit on my hands and wait for a miracle to happen.”

They should have been paying rent during this time but haven’t since at least May. Even before, the landlord said they wouldn’t pay the owners what they were owed.

The landlord said she submitted all her evidence to the residential tenancy board in November.

“As a landlord, my copies of things in my file, they don’t need to be signed. The only part that matters is their portion being signed,” she explained.

After she submitted her evidence to the board, she had 17 days to send the tenants the evidence, so she made copies and sent them through Canada Post. She says the tenants picked it up in late December.

“[Then] they took all my unsigned copies of everything, and they used that as their evidence,” she said.

“So then in our court date, the judge basically said, ‘well, from what I can see, they don’t have signed paperwork, so that’s it, I’m not going to go any further with this. You will have to start the process over again.’”

The landlord started the process again, and the next appearance in front of the residential agency board court is in May 2023.

On Friday, she said she spent all morning on hold with the residential tenancy board, hoping she and the owners could secure an emergency eviction order.

She was told to apply online and wasn’t confident it would be conducted in a timely manner.

The unit in question also has a basement suite, which the landlord says has a small kitchen, one bedroom, one bathroom and access to the upstairs section of the unit.

Initially, she said, the owners didn’t want to include the basement in the agreement, but the tenants wanted to rent it out to use the income to help pay for rent.

“In August, I did an inspection of the inside of the home,” the landlord said. 

“And when I got to the basement part, there were holes in the walls and shower heads missing. There were burns in the porcelain of the bathtub, broken glass all over the place, and the door handles were all hanging by a thread, basically.”

The tenant emailed the landlord, saying they didn’t want anything to do with the basement suite anymore.

The landlord told the owner they could enter to check out what needed to be repaired. When the owners entered the basement suite in September, the tenant called the police.

“Saying that the owner of the building was breaking into their home, and they didn’t give any notice,” she said.

“I actually was told by the police that I shouldn’t go to that property on my own, that it was dangerous and that they were aggressive.”

On Saturday, the local RCMP released an image of the vehicle involved in the shooting, a black or dark mid-2000 Volkswagen Jetta with what appears to be a dark side tire rim. 

Investigators are asking anyone who may have security camera footage of the area between the time of approximately 4:20 and 4:26 a.m. on the morning of the incident to review their footage and report any relevant information to RCMP. 

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Fort St. John RCMP at 250-787-8100.

Residents who wish to remain anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or submit a tip online at www.northernbccrimestoppers.ca.