Vancouver police are investigating after a homeless man was shot with an arrow in the city’s Downtown Eastside on Thursday.
Police say the 22-year-old victim was standing outside the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre at Columbia and East Cordova streets when someone shot him in the leg from a nearby building.
The man walked a block to the Insite supervised injection site with the arrow lodged below his kneecap, where staff gave him first aid and called 911.
“This level of callousness and disregard is shocking,” VPD Sgt. Steve Addison said in a media release.
“All signs point to this being a random attack, and we’re incredibly concerned because the victim was already one of our community’s most vulnerable.”
Police think the arrow was fired from the fire escape of a building on East Hastings Street, and said they later recovered a “cache of real and imitation weapons from the building, including crossbows, replica assault rifles, scopes, lights, and lasers.”
Addison said police believe the suspect fled before officers arrived.
The incident comes just weeks after another homeless man was pushed to the ground and repeatedly kicked by a stranger in Yaletown.