As gun crime rises in N.L., so do efforts by police and fears for innocent civilians
CBC
A group of children in the St. John’s neighbourhood of Shea Heights were playing outside last spring, when they made a shocking discovery.
“They came home and said that they found a gun,” said the mother of one of the children.
“We were in disbelief.”
Lying on the ground in a wooded area behind some homes was a 9-mm Taurus handgun.
It was loaded.
“It was just like something you've seen in a movie and it was very eerie,” the woman said in a recent interview.
“This could have been a completely different outcome.”
CBC News is not identifying the families involved due to safety concerns. Police have not yet identified who used the gun — and what they used it for — before it landed in the hands of children.
Police do, however, believe they know where it originated — thousands of kilometres away in Georgia, a state with some of the weakest gun laws in the United States.
The potential consequences of criminal activity crossing into the path of innocent civilians isn’t lost on Const. Mitchell Ryall.
"The risk comes in where — especially with handguns — they're a little harder to aim, a little harder to control," Ryall said in an interview.
"And those risks certainly increase ... of an innocent bystander or someone's loved one or just a passerby being struck with a round."
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer is seconded to the RCMP’s National Weapons Enforcement Support Team.
Ryall investigates firearms that come into the custody of the RNC — and lately, that's been often.
Whitehorse city council is considering a proposal to study 14 lots throughout the city for housing development.
In the closing days of the NDP leadership race, Avi Lewis's past activism has resurfaced. But the front-runner's campaign is standing by his past work and a decade-old vision that's been both criticized within the New Democrats' ranks and weaponized by their opponents.
Some rural municipalities want the province to know ambulance response times and basic care in their communities are not meeting the mark.
The sighting of a sniper on Saturday during St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Waterloo was met with fear and shock by some partygoers, but one policing expert says this was a proactive measure designed to keep the crowd safe.
A 25-year old Prince Edward Island man has been sentenced to six months in jail for firearms offences.
Closing schools, stalled housing starts — not common headlines in Alberta's booming cities.
Two MLAs and the Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation chief say they welcome the territory’s new trespassing legislation because they believe it will help address concerns about uninvited guests intruding in people’s homes and refusing to leave.
U.S. President Donald Trump is struggling to persuade other nations to help protect commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a development that analysts say is partly the result of treating allies with contempt since returning to the White House last year.
The actions of an Alberta judge who lost his temper and briefly jailed a defence lawyer in the middle of a trial were “unacceptable,” ruled the Judicial Inquiry Board, which recommended a 30-day suspension without pay for Justice Gordon Yake.
Irish-born chef Liam Brannigan says there are four words he loves to hear about the food he serves as he drives his food truck around southwestern Ontario.
Last spring, the Newfoundland and Labrador government announced a loan guarantee program for restaurants — but so far, businesses haven't tapped into it.
Several organizations and groups in Greater Sudbury, Ont. remain closed or operating under a modified schedule after a major storm hit the region Sunday night.
As Halifax scraps plans for a sobering centre, staff at similar facilities across Canada say they’re a crucial part of the continuum of care needed to address homelessness and addiction.