Neighbours had `front-row seat' to standoff that shook Penbrooke
When the city police sniper with a scoped rifle showed up at Eyakme Negussie's door to use his home for a perch, the Calgarian said he wasn't going (to) refuse.
“I didn't say no,” said Negussie. “He took up a place in my daughter's room.”
The man pointed to mud left behind by the tactical team member's boots on the floor of his eight-yearold daughter's bedroom.
He said, `don't turn on the lights or open the window ... he pushed back her bed,'” said Negussie.
The bedroom's window would have provided a straight shot into the home barricaded by a suspect who was killed by police in the southeast Penbrooke neighbourhood a few hours later.
Negussie said he doesn't know if any of the fatal shots were fired from his home because he'd been evacuated from it.
And he said he couldn't find any bullet holes on his property from rounds fired across Memorial Dr. from the suspect's residence.
But he said the experience left his daughter traumatized.
“She's kind of scared ... I don't know if she can sleep alone or not.”
Next door, Michael Hopkins said a CPS sniper also set up a perch on his property — in his case in a part of his backyard with a view of the suspect home on the south side of Memorial Dr.
“He moved my picnic table,” said Hopkins, who displayed a photo of the partly-concealed police officer with sniper's gear seated at a table in his yard. “He (initially) wanted to check my front window to get a shot through.”
Hopkins said he watched repeated attempts by police to storm the suspect's home or flush him out.
“There'd be three gunshots, then flash bombs, then quiet, then another three gunshots and more flash bombs,” he said.
“At 3 (a.m. Friday) there were more flash bombs that didn't work (in ending the standoff) ... I had a front-row seat.”
A video he shot shows an armoured police tactical vehicle firing what appear to be smoke or tear gas rounds at the suspect's bungalow, and then reversing away.
“They just couldn't break into his house,” said Hopkins.
When asked if he'd found any bullet holes in vehicles or homes in the suspect's firing line, a police officer examining a house's siding shrugged and said “still looking.”
A woman who lives a few doors down from the suspect's home said a city police officer arrived at her home shortly before the standoff's deadly end to instruct them to leave.
On audio from a video she took of the interaction, the Tactical Team member can be heard to say, “we're going to have to amp things up a little bit.”
Before that, the woman said she'd spent a mostly sleepless Thursday night in her home just a few metres away from where a gunman was shooting at police.
“He was shooting from the front and back ... I was up until four in the morning (Friday),” said Melissa, who didn't want to give her last name. “(Police) tried all night and all day to get him out.”
The most terrifying moments of the 30-hour ordeal, she said, was when the first shots were fired Thursday afternoon.
“There were school kids right across the street and you could hear them screaming,” said Melissa.
From an RCMP photo, she identified the slain gunman as 45-yearold Patrick Robert Kimmel, who she described as “polite.”
“We had no issues with him except he was doing some shady stuff,” said Melissa. “There were cars coming all the time, always different vehicles, things going on his garage all night that were very loud.”
One time, the woman said she saw Kimmel pushing a shopping cart full of vehicle exhaust parts towards his home.
Other neighbours said city bylaw officers frequented the home's back alley to ensure unwanted vehicles weren't blocking it.
But none of Kimmel's neighbours said they ever spotted him with firearms, the reason police say they initially went to his home on Thursday.
Neighbour Justin Anderson said people are relieved to be back in their homes after either evacuating them or being prevented from returning to them after work on Thursday.
“A lot of people were getting pretty annoyed,” he said.
“It was pretty crazy.”