Man, 73, faces murder charge in Rockland death

A 73-year-old man faces a first-degree murder charge in the death Tuesday of a 75-year-old man who died in hospital after police responded to morning gunfire at a Clarence-Rockland home. In a media release Thursday morning, provincial police announced that Richard Fortin is charged with killing Paul Jobin. It was the first time that police identified either man. Fortin next appears in court in L’Original on Nov. 13. He made a first court appearance on the day of the incident, an OPP spokeswoman said Thursday. Police, paramedics and firefighters responded to reports of gunfire at a home on Du Parc Avenue at St. Joseph Street in Rockland at 8:35 a.m. Tuesday. Jobin was rushed to hospital but died of his injuries. Neighbour Rita Chayer was at home Tuesday morning when she heard crying that sounded like a child’s outside. She opened the door to see police officers, and a woman who lives in the house next door, barefoot and weeping. “It was terrible to hear her,” said Chayer, 91, who said she never expected violence to strike so close to her home of six decades. The home is just down the street from a park, an arena, a public library and a school. “We never imagined this,” she said Wednesday. “It’s awful.” On Wednesday, Russell County OPP barricaded Du Parc Avenue at St. Joseph Street in the community just past Ottawa’s eastern border and stationed a cruiser outside a house ringed with police tape. The neat split-level, already adorned with Christmas wreaths, is divided into two apartments with separate street addresses, one upstairs and one down. Each was occupied by a couple in their 70s, Chayer said. One had lived there a decade; the other about four years. Two Ford 150 pickup trucks sat in the driveway of the house. Part of Du Parc Avenue was still barricaded Thursday, the OPP said, as part of the investigation by the Russell County OPP crime unit with the help of the force’s east region support team and forensic identification officers from Long Sault. Rockland is about 40 kilometres east of Ottawa.