Garrett Topp and his wife were in bed watching the news on Wednesday night when gunfire cut through the walls of their Kiniski Road home, in Kelowna B.C.
“A couple of bullets came into the bedroom. One hit the back of the headboard in between us and the other one hit a (bottle) that broke,” he said.
Topp said he doesn’t remember what he was thinking at the moment but knows he ran for his phone and called 911. The 911 operator asked him to look outside to see if the shooter was there.
He opted not to, for fear they were, but said he did take note of the fact that there was no engine sound. He thinks the shooter or shooters must have been on foot and the police arrived quickly thereafter.
Six bullets entered his house. He said he has no idea what would have prompted the violence to erupt. Yet he noted that in the last three months, there have been some strange incidents in the area. Tires have been slashed and there was a break-in and theft to a basement suite.
None of it, he said, was directed at him.
“I don’t drink, I don’t have debts, I don’t have any big enemies,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to speculate. Maybe they were out joyriding and decided to unload their magazine in our house. The weird thing is, we’re in a cul de sac, so they would have had to drive here.”
RCMP issued a release about the incident, stating that there were six adults in the house at the time of the shooting and that it was a targeted incident.
Topp, his wife and daughter live upstairs and he has a downstairs tenant who has been there four months. She moved in, he said, after her husband was killed elsewhere in Kelowna.
RCMP has been watching the house closely since the shooting and Topp said that’s a relief and a reminder of what’s most important.
“Hold your families close,” he said.
“You never know. You watch this stuff on the news and think, I am glad I live in Canada with no guns and no gun violence, but there is.”
No arrests have been made and RCMP officers remain in the area collecting evidence.
Anyone with information on this crime, or who had surveillance video of the area, is asked to contact the Kelowna RCMP by calling 250-762-3300, or anonymously by calling CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477.