VPD arrest and charge man in connection to suspicious death in Andy Livingstone Park

Vancouver Police have arrested a man in connection to a homicide that happened in a downtown park on Friday evening.

Twenty-six-year-old Matthew Brenner has been charged with second-degree murder.

The incident happened in Andy Livingstone Park, just east of Rogers Arena, before 10 p.m on July 17.

According to VPD Sgt. Randy Fincham, minutes after police received the call, members of the department’s volunteer crime watch team spotted a suspicious man running from the area.

They told their police coordinator, who subsequently detained the suspect.

“If it wasn’t for the dedication and quick thinking of the volunteers in the VPD’s Citizens’ Crime Watch, we would not have been able to take this dangerous offender off the street so quickly,” said Fincham in a statement.

Homicide investigators and the VPD’s Forensic Identification unit were at the park through the night and in the morning.

The victim is a 44-year-old man who recently arrived in Vancouver, but his name has not been released.