A community is reeling after at least four people, including two police officers, were killed in a shooting in a quiet, residential area of Fredericton on Friday morning.
One suspect is in custody in connection with the shooting as police continue to investigate the scene at Brookside Drive, an area in the city’s northside that is full of houses and grocery stores and home to a church and an elementary school.
Although police say there is no further threat to the public, many people in the area are on edge after waking up to gunshots and being told the area was on lockdown.
‘I saw three bodies laying there’
Tim Morehouse, a resident of an apartment complex on Brookside Drive, said he awoke to gunshots around 8:30 a.m. AT and looked out his back window and “saw three bodies laying there” in the back parking lot of 237 Brookside Dr.
WATCH: Fredericton resident describes the moment he “woke up to gunshots”
“I looked outside first and there was a cop that was shooting at the shooter and looked at my back window and saw three people that were dead,” he said.
“There was one male cop, a female cop and one civilian,” Morehouse said. “It was shocking. I still don’t know what to think. You can’t unsee what I saw.”
Melissa Nason, 36, who lives in an apartment next door to where the shooting happened, said she woke up around 7 a.m. and heard about “20 shots fired.”
“There were breaks in between the shooting,” she said. “I could not see anything from where I was. Police did not want anyone to be near the window.”
Nason said her building was on lockdown for nearly three hours, but it has since been lifted. However, she hasn’t been outside yet, as “she feels scared.”
“I’ve lived here for seven years and, out of the blue, this happened. … What in the world is going on?”
WATCH: Pierre Huard, who lives in the Brookside neighbourhood, describes the ‘chaos’ of the shooting
‘It takes you back to the shooting in Moncton’
One witness said the incident reminds her of the tragic 2014 shooting rampage in Moncton, N.B., that left thee RCMP officers dead.
“It was scary,” Marlene Weaver told Reuters. She said she was in her bed on Friday morning when she heard shots ring out in her neighbourhood. “It takes you back to the shooting in Moncton.”
READ MORE: How the Moncton shooting turned into a manhunt
David MacCoubrey told the Canadian Press he awoke in his apartment on Brookside Drive around 7:07 a.m. to the sound of gunshots “10 metres from my bed.”
MacCoubrey said three gunshots woke him up, and as many as 17 more have been fired between that time and around 8:30 a.m. He said his apartment complex has four buildings in a square, and it sounded like the shots were coming from the middle of the complex.
One witness, who did not want to be named, told Global News police came to her door and told her to go in her basement, and then her “shots after the police came.”
Travis Hrubeniuk, 27, told the Canadian Press his fiancee had just left for work around 7:45 a.m. when he began hearing a steady stream of sirens.
Hrubeniuk said the quiet residential neighbourhood is the last place he expected to encounter a dangerous situation.
“This is the first time I’ve even heard of any serious crime or violent crime in this city,” he said. “It’s a little off-putting that way, and I’ve been here for about a year.”
— With files from Reuters and the Canadian Press
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