SURREY, B.C. — Patrol officers investigating a shots-fired call at a Surrey, B.C., townhouse made a gruesome discovery on Sunday.
Police found a boy and a man both dead, and a woman with serious injuries.
The boy was between the age of 11 and 14, but police know little else and had to seal off the murder scene for several hours afterward while they worked to get a search warrant.
The injured woman was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Cpl. Dale Carr, with the Integrated Homicide Squad, said a man was arrested immediately at the scene, but they’re not sure what role he may have played in the double murder, if any.
“He was at the home, and was promptly arrested by Surrey RCMP,” Carr said.
“We’re being abundantly cautious and not implicating that male as being responsible.”
Carr said homicide investigators would be interviewing the man later.
Police aren’t sure yet what could have set off the murders.
“It’s certainly way too earlier to indicate whether or not there’s any link to drugs, gangs, organized crime,” Carr said.
“We’re also looking at whether this has a domestic link to it.”
The shooting breaks a month of relative calm in the Metro Vancouver area.
Between January and May, there were four dozen shootings in the Lower Mainland, 20 of them fatal.
Police blamed the attacks on a rival gang members.
Officials associated with bringing the 2010 Olympic Games to British Columbia have expressed concern about the violence.
Since May, police have made numerous arrests of high-profile gang members and laid charges, including first-degree murder allegations in the so-called Surrey-six murders.
Six people were killed in a Surrey highrise building in October 2007.
Police say two of those killed were innocent bystanders who were in the wrong place when one gang came to kill members of another.