When gunshots don't sound like gunshots

First some random housekeeping...

For the person who googled Root Beer Slurpee (a close second to Dr. Pepper) - if you're still looking, try the Sev in EK by Rona, just off Panet. They had them a week or two ago.

For the person looking for VW hubcaps - send me a message, I might have what you need if you didn't already find it. I, and most of my friends seem to hoard VW's.

For all of you that are looking for some variation of Winnipeg and h00kers (streets for h00kers in Winnipeg, Winnipeg h00kers, where to find Winnipeg h00kers and so on), please consider not looking in my residential part of the North End. I'm genuinely a little disturbed as to how many hits my blog gotten based on people who seem to be googling for h00kers.

To expand on a rant from way back when, Geography, where I expressed anger at negative news being attributed to the North End when it didn't belong there. At the time I didn't really have evidence that I could link to (as my own memory doesn't record details like dates and times that I get angry. Ok, well, now it does a bit more that I have a blog, but I digress...) so every time I come across something now, I try to add it to the list. So, Mike McIntyre, this one is for you. The intersection of Ross and Isabel is NOT in the North End. Thanks. While I'm thanking people, thanks to Winnipeg Cat for a daily chuckle and the link that led me to the story.


Oh, and the Wolseley project? Well, we're two weeks in and going strong. Only a little disturbance to the flowers and one lost due to natural causes.

Now on to my attention grabbing post headline...
Picture it, Saturday night in the North End. It was a nice enough night out, which generally means it's a little bit loud, but this past Saturday night was actually pretty quiet.  At one point, we'll say, maybe around 1130, I hear a series of noises that "sounded like gunshots". Or at least slightly less identifiable than most of the other noises that people claim sound like gunshots. For the record, most of the noises that are "gunshots all of the time" (see almost every story involving a shooting in the core area for this quote) are fireworks, backfiring cars, cars driving over glass bottles, cars driving over juice boxes, or pretty much any other noise besides gunshots. Of course, sometimes they are gunshots.

So Saturday night I hear a series of noises that didn't quite sound like the usual fireworks, but I wasn't really sure what they were either. Since there were no sirens immediately after I didn't really think about it too much. About half an hour or so after that, there was a loud BANG! sort of noise, but more like the sound two train cars make when they're joining up. I thought it sounded like it came from the government housing units across the street so I looked out the window, saw nothing of note, listened for a minute or so and went back to watching tv. Another minute or two later I heard the same sort of noise again so rushed to the window to try and figure out what the heck was going on. Was someone tipping over autobins again? There was not a soul in sight and no other noises to be heard. Back to my PVR I went.

About ten minutes later a vehicle tore down my street, like it was in a NASCAR race - it went by so fast that by the time I jumped up to see what kind of vehicle it was, it had already passed. I returned to the TV only to jump up like a jack in the box like 20 minutes later to the sound of a bunch of voices outside my window. This time I meandered outside to see what was going on. There were numerous cop cars milling about and the neighbours said there had been gunshots. Wait, you mean the banging noises half an hour ago?

Apparently. I wandered up to the next block where the most police activity was and asked one of the few officers who was not looking all over the ground with a flashlight, what was going on. I was asked if I heard anything, I repeated the above story and was very amusingly given a "ma'am, I can tell you that there has been a gun fired, perhaps it's best you return home". Eventually the intersection was closed off with police tape. Now, I can see most of that intersection from the window I was looking out, it can't be more than 50m from my house, and there were no people milling about after I heard the sound that didn't sound anything like what TV, Movies and my own one confirmed account of gunshots have told me that gunshots sound like.

Interestingly, right around the time they were closing off the street with police tape, about 25m to the other side of my house there was a number of cop cars all of a sudden and they had stopped a car and had 4 people down on the ground. I was led to believe (can't know for sure of course as the police tend to be tight-lipped on these sorts of things) that the two things were connected however the time delays between all of the events confuses me.

Oh, and Choppy (forgive me, I don't remember which blogger called the Police helicopter that, but it amuses me so I'm going to use it too) was there circling around for quite a while. Well surely an event of this magnitude made the papers and you're just desperately searching for where I've hidden the link to the article... nope. Nothing. Nada. No hint of a story.

I don't write this post to highlight yet another negative thing that has happened in the North End, I mean, I don't want to hide the negative either, but more to point out two things. One, we need more information from the Police. When something of this magnitude happens there should be a website that explains at least the basics so we can arm ourselves with the most powerful weapon out there - information. Perhaps a rule such as if more than XX cars are dispatched (I would say 4 is a good number) to a call, a brief summary should be made available to the public. Two, sometimes gunshots don't sound like gunshots.