Business owners 'on edge' after downtown Vancouver stabbing

Business owners are reeling after a stabbing suspect was shot dead by police in a Vancouver convenience store this week.

The owner of Simon’s Bike Shop, which is located across the street from the 7-Eleven where the incident occurred, said he was startled to hear the shots ring out Wednesday morning.

“I said you know what? I am going to retreat back to my store,” Simon Coutts said Thursday.

Although the incident was frightening, Coutts said he’s becoming used to seeing trouble in the neighbourhood, including vandalism.

“They’re breaking the windows,” he said. “You can come by here on any given day and there’s incidents, just in this area.”

The 7-Eleven remained closed Thursday, as police officers continued combing the crime scene for evidence.

Jane Talbot, president of the Downtown Vancouver Business Association, said Coutts isn’t alone, and that other business owners are feeling “on edge.”

“It’s a challenging environment at the best of times, and when you add the complex issues of incidents such as yesterday’s, it makes it even more difficult to have a business here in Vancouver,” Talbot said.

Without urgent changes from all three levels of government, shops will be forced to close, Talbot said.

“It could be too late for many of our small businesses. Our businesses are concerned. They are concerned for the people and they are concerned for their livelihood,” she said.

Martin Andresen, a criminologist with Simon Fraser University, said despite the latest statistics showing violent crime is down 6.6 per cent, the nature of the offences is shifting.

“Theres most definitely an increase in social and public disorder, and a lot of people are seeing that and they are associating that with crime,” Andresen said.

Last week, a man sucker punched a stranger at a bus stop on West Georgia Street, and in September, just blocks away, two people were attacked. One had his hand severed and the other was killed.

“Someone who ends up attacking someone with a machete and cutting off their hand and killing another person isn’t well. There would have been a number of points throughout their life where they have been failed by our system because we don’t have the resources,” said Andresen.

In the case of that attack, the man charged was identified by the courts as requiring counselling and forensic psychiatric services as part of a probation order in 2022.

The suspect had a long history of offences with the courts – including assault convictions and resisting an arrest from RCMP.

Wednesday’s stabbing is now being investigated by the Independent Investigations Office of B.C., a provincial watchdog called after police-involved incidents that result in death or serious harm, and no further information has been released about the suspect.

Vancouver police have not said whether the suspect was known to them, or whether the victims were employes of either the 7-Eleven.

With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Lisa Steacy