ONTARIO COP SHOT BY FELLOW COP.

PELHAM, ONT. • An Ontario police officer was critically injured Thursday after he was shot by a fellow officer, Ontario’s police watchdog said. The shooting between two members of the Niagara regional police force occurred at an accident scene on a rural road in Pelham, a small town 22 kilometres south of St. Catharines.

The officers, a sergeant and a constable, got into a “heated argument” that turned into a fist fight, sources told Postmedia News.

The sergeant, who was losing the fight, allegedly “pulled out his gun and shot him,” the sources said, adding there had been “bad blood” between the pair for some time.

The 44-year-old constable was airlifted from a St. Catharines hospital to a trauma centre in Hamilton with critical injuries.

Niagara police confirmed an officer was injured and airlifted to hospital, but would not comment any further as the Special Investigations Unit had taken over the investigation.

Monica Hudon, a spokeswoman for the SIU, said it was probing “an interaction” between two officers around noon that resulted in one being “struck by a gunshot.”

She would not say how many times the officer was shot. A source told Postmedia it was three times.

She said the officers were on the scene of an accident reconstruction investigation for a collision that had occurred days earlier in the Effingham Street area.

The SIU, which is an arm’slength agency automatically called into a police shooting, has assigned eight investigators and three forensic experts to the Pelham shooting.

The SIU has not made any arrests, the spokeswoman said.

Local residents said the incident led to a rush of squad cars racing to the scene in the early afternoon.

Robin Zavitz, who lives in the area, said she was driving home around 1:30 p.m. when she came across a police blockade. She said she could see a police SUV in the ditch and numerous squad cars nearby.

“It’s scary when a police officer has been shot in the middle of the day,” Zavitz said.

Zavitz said a police car had been blocking the road at the same intersection all morning, but added the flurry of police activity didn’t occur until the early afternoon.

Niagara regional police had tweeted earlier Thursday that the road would be partially closed for an investigation.

Mike Shepherd was driving home earlier in the day when he came across the same intersection around 11:30 a.m. An officer was in his squad car, blocking the road eastbound, Shepherd said. “He said they were doing an accident investigation down the road,” Shepherd added. A little more than an hour later, he said he saw an ambulance rush by.