The Independent Investigations Office is investigating the second shooting death by Vancouver police in nine days after a man died Thursday in an incident at a hotel on East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside.
Const. Tania Visintin, a VPD media relations officer, said in a news release Friday that officers responded to the Patricia Hotel at 403 East Hastings St. just after 4 p.m. Thursday to reports of an assault with a weapon.
Visintin said officers were confronted by a man.
“An altercation ensued and shots were fired,” she said. “A man in his 40s died at scene.”
The shooting comes nine days after another man in his 40s died in an exchange of gunfire with police in an apartment building near Commercial Drive and East Fifth Avenue.
In a news release at the time, police said they responded April 27 just after 8:30 p.m. to reports of an alleged assault in the building. When officers arrived, “there was an interaction that resulted in an exchange of gunfire,” police said.
“The suspect, a man in his 40s, subsequently died,” the release said. “One police officer was injured and taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.”
In another incident in the Downtown Eastside Thursday, police said they responded to a 911 call shortly after midnight to a social housing complex near East Hastings and Princess Avenue.
A man, who wasn't a tenant, was armed with a rifle and ammunition and had barricaded himself in a staff area at the building.
Police said he was arrested without incident.
A 29-year-old Surrey man faces several firearms charges.
The provincial government purchased the Patricia Hotel last year from longtime private owners, who had previously complained to the Vancouver Police Board about street disorder, crime and violence outside their doors.
In one incident outside the hotel in July 2019, which was captured on video, police fired at least three beanbag rounds from a shotgun to arrest a man.
The Nelson family had owned the hotel since 1983 and sold it and its adjoining parking lot to the government for $63.8 million.
After the purchase, the government moved many people into the hotel from the Strathcona Park homeless camp, which has since been dismantled.
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