Shooting of prominent home builder 10th homicide in city this year

A prominent home builder and pillar of Edmonton's Southeast Asian community is confirmed to be the city's 10th homicide of the year after a gunman showed up at a residential construction site Monday and first attempted to kill another worker.

Officers responding to the shooting near Cavanagh Boulevard S.W. and Cherniak Way S.W. around noon found three men with gunshot wounds, one being homebuilder Buta Singh Gill, 56.

Emergency medical services arrived and declared Gill and the 49-year-old gunman dead on scene.

A 51-year-old man was transported to hospital with serious, life-threatening shooting injuries. He remains in hospital.

The Edmonton medical examiner on Tuesday completed an autopsy on Gill, concluding his cause of death to be gunshot wounds and the manner of death to be homicide.

On Wednesday, the medical examiner's autopsy on the 49-yearold man found his cause of death to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. As a result, police are not releasing his name.

No charges will be laid because the killer is now dead.

Investigators are looking into whether the case has any connection to Project Gaslight, a series of extortion attempts targeting homebuilders from South Asian communities.

But former city police detective and Edmonton councillor Mohinder Banga said Tuesday that he did not believe extortion was behind the killing of his friend, the owner of GillBuilt Homes.

“Mr. Gill was such a nice person; he was willing and ready to help anybody who needed help at any time. He was heavily involved in the community and involved in the Sikh temple,” said Banga.

Banga said it's his understanding the shooter at some point worked for Gill and came to the construction site before getting into an altercation with the 51-year-old man, an engineer on the project. The engineer was shot before Gill tried to intervene and then Gill was fatally shot before the gunman turned the weapon on himself.

Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said he has been in touch with Gill's family, the community and the gurdwara. He also knows the man who remains in hospital.

“It's absolutely devastating for the families, absolutely devastating for the community,” he said.