Shooting victim’s mom calls for end to violence
Road-rage killings are extremely rare in Canada, criminology professor says
The mother of a Vancouver man shot to death Friday in what police called a road rage incident is calling for an end to gun violence.
Sunni Hunt spoke to reporters about her son Willis on Monday as police continued to gather evidence in a bid to determine precisely what led to the 33-year-old man’s death.
“This is a country of peace and caring and respect,” Hunt said. “Violence is not normal. Shooting is not normal here. I don’t want it to become normalized. … It shouldn’t be acceptable in any of our minds.
“I pray that my son’s life will not go in vain. That something good will come out of it. Why did the man have a gun? Who does that?”
Hunt said Willis grew up in east Vancouver and attended Britannia Secondary. He had many friends in the Commercial Drive area and was a positive, caring, non-judgmental man who “always lifted people up,” she said.
“He really wanted to teach people that life could be good and that that takes effort on our part,” she said.
Willis’s cousins and nephews looked up to him and he taught them to live healthily, Hunt said. He had an entrepreneurial spirit and worked as a carpenter.
“I’m very proud of who he became and who he was. One of his closest people said he was a lighthouse. He was like a lighthouse in the storms of life. That’s who Willis was.”
Hunt said she prayed that the person responsible would be found so they can never kill again.
“A mom should never … she’s not supposed to put her son to rest. That’s not how it was supposed to work.”
Jason Doucette, a Vancouver Police Department spokesman, said police continue to gather evidence. He said investigators have not yet ruled anything out.
“The current theory, and based on the information that we’ve received, we do believe it’s related to a road rage incident or an altercation on the roadway. But until we have more information, it’s still too early for us to tell.”
Doucette said he was not aware of any link between the shooting victim, who was a passenger in a grey Toyota Matrix, or the female driver of that vehicle, and the suspect, who was in a white sedan.
But he said police “don’t have tunnel vision on road rage. We’re looking bigger scope as well.”
Police were called to the shooting near Bridgeway Street, which runs beneath the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge off-ramp, shortly after 1:30 a.m. Friday.
Police and paramedics arrived within minutes, but they could not save Hunt’s life. He died at the scene.
Rob Gordon, a Simon Fraser University criminology professor, said a road rage shooting is, by Vancouver’s standards, quite unusual.
“I cannot recall an incident where somebody was shot as a result of a road rage incident. I don’t know what’s going on elsewhere in Canada, but I don’t think this is a common happening, and I don’t think it’s a common happening because we’re not a nation that carries firearms as a matter of course.”