Vancouver police are raising safety concerns at Oppenheimer Park yet again after a woman was injured in a shooting Saturday afternoon.
Police say the 53-year-old victim showed up at hospital around 3:30 p.m. and reported being shot while stopped in a vehicle on Dunlevy Avenue, just west of the Downtown Eastside park.
The woman had come to Vancouver from Powell River, B.C., to visit a man who is staying at the encampment set up within the park, according to police.
Investigators have described the shooting as “targeted.”
“The victim had surgery at hospital, and the injuries are not life-threatening,” police said in a statement.
No suspects have been arrested and the investigation is ongoing.
The shooting is the latest in a string of violent incidents reported at the park and the surrounding Downtown Eastside area in recent months, where police say public safety is “deteriorating.”
In September, the neighbourhood was rocked by three shootings in a 15-hour period, at least one of them close to Oppenheimer Park.
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Earlier this month, police arrested three men and thwarted a murder plot linked to a gang conflict in the Downtown Eastside. According to the police statement Sunday, the target of that plot was a rival drug trafficker who operates near Oppenheimer.
Deputy Chief Const. Howard Chow has said the park is acting “like a magnet” for crime, saying there was a “direct nexus” between growing violence in the DTES and the encampment.
The Oppenheimer tent city grew to more than 200 campers over the summer.
In August, the bulk of those campers moved into single-room occupancy (SRO) hotel housing, but many remained, accusing the city of not doing enough to provide housing options.
Chow told the Vancouver Park Board last month that 476 weapons have been seized from within a seven-block area of the DTES between June and August of this year, with 17 of them coming from Oppenheimer Park.
Despite noting a similar increase in gun seizures from within a massive district of the city that includes the DTES, Chow clarified none of them came from Oppenheimer.
At that meeting, the park board voted for a “collaborative” approach to finding shelter for the remaining campers in an effort to clear the park without a court injunction.
Vancouver city council approved a similar motion last week, calling for staff to address increased supports and to work with provincial ministers to look “aggressively” for land and funding for modular housing while trying to find winter shelter options for the city’s 600 street homeless people.
In the meantime, police have pledged to deploy more officers to the Downtown Eastside and look at mounting a stationary camera in efforts to curb escalating crime.
Anyone who has information helpful to the investigation in Saturday’s shooting is asked to contact Vancouver police or Crime Stoppers.
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