LANGLEY — Homicide investigators are trying to determine why an armed man went on a rampage in Langley early on Monday, shooting two people to death and injuring two more.
The rampage ended when police caught up to a suspect at the location of the fourth shooting and shot him to death.
“We don’t know the motive behind this deadly incident nor if there was any relationship between the deceased suspect and the victims,” RCMP Chief Supt. Ghalib Bhayani said.
Police identified the dead suspect as 28-year old Jordan Daniel Goggin from Surrey. In a statement, the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said Goggin was known to police, but had “no criminal contacts.”
The shootings spanned nearly six hours across several sites in Langley City and the Township of Langley, and targeted at least one person living in a supportive housing complex.
“These people were targeted, but the nature of how they are related to the shooter, we’re still trying to determine that,” IHIT Sgt. David Lee told a news conference at the Langley RCMP detachment.
Police said the shootings started around midnight in the area of the Cascades Casino near 203A Street and Fraser Highway, where a woman was shot and taken to Langley hospital in critical condition.
The shooter then went to Creek Stone Place, a supportive housing site in the 6400-block of 200 Street, where shots were fired at around 3 a.m. One person was killed there, about two kilometres north of the casino.
Two hours later, at 5 a.m., more gunfire erupted at the Langley City bus loop near Logan Avenue and Glover Road — a few hundred metres away from the casino site. Another man was killed there.
The violence ended 45 minutes later at 200 Street and the Langley Bypass where police confronted a suspect after a man was shot in the leg. Police did not say if the suspect shot at police before officers opened fire, but a police vehicle was seen with numerous bullet holes.
Bhayani said evidence points to a single gunman responsible for the shootings. The victims have all been identified by the police, but their identities were not released.
One of the victims was identified by a friend as Paul Wallace, known as “small Paul”.
Longtime friend Cheryl Smith, 55, told Postmedia News that Wallace was in his 50s and lived at Creek Stone Place, a former Quality Inn hotel that the province converted to a supportive-housing complex.
Around noon, Smith ran up to police tape at the Langley City bus loop with tears in her eyes, pleading for Mounties to let her know if the victim who lay underneath a forensic identification unit tent was one of her friends.
“I feel heartbroken,” Smith told Postmedia from the window of her car. “Paul was an awesome guy. He helped a lot of people in the community, including me, when I was down and out.”
“This was an isolated incident as far as we know,” Langley City Mayor Val van den Broek said. “I just want to say to the Langley community: We’re strong and we’ll get through this.”
“I don’t know why people are shocked that these things happened to the less fortunate,” said Kim Snow, the founder of Kimz Angel, a non-profit that has served Langley’s homeless community.
Snow said B.C. Housing, which put up unhoused residents in Langley in hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic as an emergency self-isolation measure, told her it would use the opportunity to find permanent housing for them.
Instead, Snow said, many of those living in the hotels were put back out on the streets in March.
“It’s an unsafe place for them, sleeping outside in the dark. They are vulnerable and unprotected from all sorts of dangers and our government has let them down because they need housing to protect them.”
Late Monday, B.C. Housing confirmed in a statement one of the shooting incidents happened outside Creek Stone Place.
“Victim Services has been in touch with staff and other residents at Creek Stone to provide support as needed,” the statement said. At the news conference, Lee said police were not able to confirm if all the victims involved were homeless.
“We cannot say right now that they are all homeless,” he said. “We are still determining how they are related to the suspect.”
The public was alerted to the unfolding incident by an emergency alert sent to cellphones across the Lower Mainland.
