Police tape has been taken down from the home where five-year-old Ethan Yellowbird was shot in the head and dead early Monday.
A memorial of white flowers tied with a yellow ribbon now sit in the playground across the street.
The boy was killed as he slept at his father’s home on the Samson reserve around 3 a.m.
RCMP believe the shots, fired from outside the house, may be connected to the gang activity that has long plagued the central Alberta reserve.
The dead boy is the grandson of Marvin Yellowbird, chief of the Samson Cree First Nation.
Though the investigation inside the home is complete, police officers and search and rescue personnel continue to comb the town for evidence.
Children’s toys could be seen through a basement window of the home and Christmas lights line the roof.
Gunshots woke neighbours, who rushed to windows to see screaming people rush from the home. Late-night shootings were common in Hobbema in 2008 and 2009. Asia Saddleback was two when she was shot in a drive-by shooting in April 2008. She survived, but the bullet remains near her spine.
Since then, violence on the reserve had quieted. There were two murders last year, one of them gang-related. Before Monday, there had not been a criminal death on the reserve this year.
James Thom lives a few houses away from where Ethan died. He heard the shots. He said things in the small community have worsened since his 15-year-old grandson, Preston Thom, was shot dead Christmas Eve in 2010.
“The cops have got to do their job. Since around last Christmas time, more’s been happening here.”
The tires on his truck and a neighbour’s car were recently slashed. He suspects kids with too much time on their hands.
A few doors down, Tammylee Okeynan said she didn’t know Ethan, but his death has left her unsettled. “I think it was stupid. When I hear stuff about that going on, it kind of makes me all shaky.”
She and many other people in the community blame the violence on gangs that are fighting for “custies,” or their customers. “I don’t think it’s fair. A little boy getting shot? It’s getting ridiculous.”
She planned to leave Hobbema last week, eager to get away from the gangs that plague the area, but didn’t have enough money.
For now, she said, she’ll mind her own business until she can move.
Alberta Solicitor General Frank Oberle called the shooting “a very serious setback” for the reserve.
“An absolutely tragedy,” he said Tuesday. “I can’t imagine what it is like for the community and the family to lose an innocent child like that. My heart goes out to the chief and the entire family. I truly want to express the condolences of the province.”
In Calgary, Oberle said there had been progress in Hobbema recently, including more RCMP officers and $5 million in funding to help fight crime. However, he said officers can only do so much.
“This is not a problem that police alone can solve. Some of the solutions have to come from the community. Work together with police and with government. That’s happening,” he said.
“Nobody suggested we were going to solve all of these issues overnight. And we’ve had a very serious setback here. We can’t arrest our way out of these problems.”
In New Brunswick, Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said Ethan’s death proves there’s “urgent pressure” to start making positive changes in native communities.
Atleo pointed to the Canada-First Nations Joint Action Plan as a positive step.
The plan calls for more economic and social development opportunities for First Nations people and identifies the need for better educational opportunities and improved relationships between governing structures.
“For far too long, governments have taken decisions in isolation of and unilaterally for First Nations,” Atleo said in a phone interview.
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