Bullet Pierces Window

When Earl Stephen “Steve” Seymour was sprayed with bullets across from Pigeon Park on Friday evening, there could have been another victim. Rob Hewitt or his fiancée Venessa Marshall could have been hauled away in a body bag too.

A stray bullet pierced the window of the second floor suite Hewitt and Marshall share on Carrall St. near Hastings. The next day Hewitt noticed an orange dot outside his front door where police forensics had marked the spot where the shell casing had fallen to the ground. [Above is a photo of the building in front of which the shooting occurred. Police searched for bullet casings in front of the door covered with plywood to the left.]

Hewitt, a City employee, is upset about the shooting, according to comments he made to Vancouver's 24 Hours newspaper: "I'm sick of the attitudes towards the people down in this area who say, 'F--k, it's just a drug dealer. Who cares?'

"I care. A lot of people down here care about each other."

Hewitt is keeping the window with the bullet hole, as a reminder of what happened.

Stephen Seymour's Killer was a "Good Shot"

Photo of Earl "Steve" Seymour: CTV News

"He was a good shot." That's what one Downtown Eastsider said about Matthew Ryan Wall, who has just been charged with first degree murder in the shooting death of Earl Stephen Seymour. To shoot a moving target with a handgun and manage to get several bullets into the guy's head, you have to be a good shot, explained the Downtown Eastsider who has practiced using handguns.

Wall, 26, is known to police as a drug dealer on the Downtown Eastside. He was arrested, according to CKNW radio, in a "rooming house" on Cambie St. That could explain why there was such a strong police presence around the Cambie Hotel & Hostel just after the shooting.

Any lawyer representing Wall will be banging his head against a wall. How do you help a client who walked up to a minivan near a busy corner and said "The war is on", then started shooting a man in front of a woman sitting in the front seat?

Not that people are feeling sorry for Seymour. One long time Downtown Eastsider said, "He got what he deserved." According to the Vancouver Sun today, Seymour had been one of the kingpins in a drug dealing operation based in the Station Inn on Cambie. The operation involved the sale of crack cocaine from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., pulling in an estimated $300,000 per month. The ChronicleHerald in Halifax put it this way: "For five years starting in the late 1990s, Mr. Seymour ran a gang that sold crack on Vancouver’s east side. The operation intimidated rivals with gunfire and beatings."

But CTV reporters had no difficulty finding people on the streets of the Downtown Eastside who had good memories of Seymour. On last night's news, an aboriginal man who had the gaunt look of an addict said he had known Seymour's ex wife; Seymour had taken a liking to him and would hand him "a five here, a ten here." You have to read between the lines though: that guy may have been a good customer on welfare cheque day. All of the comments from Downtown Eastsiders aired on CTV about Seymour were positive; people remembered him as a likeable guy.

Steve Seymour was not the first member of his family to be gunned down though. In Dec. 2005, Ken and Don Seymour, cousins with whom Steve Seymour and his brother Cliff Seymour had run the West Coast cocaine ring, were gunned down. The shootings occurred in 'the Hub', a run down neighbourhood of Glace Bay, the ChronicleHerald reported. Ken Seymour died and Don Seymour survived with serious damage to his liver and other organs. Both had done six years in prison for their roles in the West Coast cocaine ring. The shootings were over a drug debt. The shooter, a fellow associate of the Hell's Angels, was recently sentenced to 15 years.

Some of Steve Seymour's relatives have insisted in internet comments that he was turning his life around since being sentenced in 2001 to six years and four months for cocaine trafficking. When he was sentenced, his lawyer Glen Orris told the judge that he wanted to get a regular job to support his four children, all under the age of six at the time. But there was no sign of that regular job when a CTV reporter asked a Downtown Eastsider, two days after the shooting, what Seymour did on the Downtown Eastside: "I'm not at liberty to say," was the response.

One woman with the hollowed out cheeks of an addict, told CTV that the shooting had left her feeling that you have to be careful what you say to people because you can never tell how they're going to react.

My guess? Wall will end up being convicted of second degree and will be eligible for parole after ten, since the killing took place in the context of the drug trafficking world. But you never know. Judges are under pressure now to take seriously these shoot 'em ups on Vancouver streets. The man who shot Lee Matasi just a few blocks away had no record of criminal involvement but didn't get off easy. When the judge sentenced him, just the day before Steve Seymour was shot, he told him he would not be eligible for parole for 16 years.

Bluenoser Blown Away

Photo: police officers collecting evidence at crime scene immediately following the shooting

The man shot and killed at Hastings & Carrall St. on Friday night has been identified as 40 year old Earl Steve Seymour. He was from originally from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia but then moved to Bible Hill, Nova Scotia. In recent years, he had been living in Vancouver. He was known to police, according to VPD spokesperson Jana McGuinness.

Further details of the murder have now surfaced. The suspect reportedly arrived in a car, parked at Pigeon Park, and then walked across the street to a parked minivan in which Seymour sat with a woman.

Upon reaching the van, CBC reports, the suspect said, "The war is on."

"Turtle" McDonald, a witness, says the victim "jumped out of the driver's seat because there was nowhere for him to go." He jumped across the hood of his minivan but by the time he managed to do so, he had taken four or five shots to the head.

After firing a total of six or seven shots, the suspect ran west, on foot, down the alley in the direction of the Army & Navy store and the Cambie Hotel Hostel.

Man Murdered in Mini-Van Near Pigeon Park

In what police are saying was a targeted hit, a man was shot in a minivan tonight near Pigeon Park at Carrall & Hastings St. A young woman in the van cradled the dying man in her arms screaming that she couldn't believe this was happening.

VPD Constable Jana McGuinness said the victim was known to police.

People at Pigeon Park, where drug users and dealers hang out, reported hearing six shots. A male neighbour who had been sitting in his room listening to the radio told the media that he had heard seven shots. Alberta, a thirty-something aboriginal woman who lives at 334 Carroll St. in a suite just over the site of the shooting, told a DTES Enquirer reporter that she heard seven shots. It appeared to Alberta that the victim had been shot multiple times in the head. It was too late to help him as "he was already dead", she said solemnly. Alberta saw a woman with him, whom she assumed to be his girlfriend.

Alberta said the victim was caucasian. The word is that his name was Steve.

Vancouver Police blocked off Pigeon Park and a nearby alley, as well as the Cambie Hostel pub [known by locals as the Cambie Hotel] a couple of blocks west, with reams of yellow tape and several police cars. They weren't allowing any new customers into the Cambie pub, a blow to revenues on a bustling Friday night. A few clusters of people who were already inside the pub were allowed to remain.

The police were not saying whether there was a connection between the heavy police presence at the Cambie Hotel and Pigeon Park. But witnesses say they saw police cars racing to the Cambie Hotel shortly after the shooting.

A female police constable standing beside yellow crime scene tape at Columbia & Hastings, told photographers to be careful where they stepped as blood was streaming down along the curb. I looked down and sure enough, there was water mixed with blood flowing past my foot toward the sewer grate. The body was apparently lying on the street near the Columbia Street entrance to the old Sunrise Hotel on Hastings St. I couldn't see it from where I was standing behind the yellow tape at around 8:00 p.m. but, according to Alberta, it was not removed by the coroner's black vehicle until 12:30 or 1:00 am.

The windshield of the van was cracked where it had been penetrated by bullets. There were also bullet holes on the side of the van.

The shooting occurred at roughly 6:30 p.m. and at 8:00 p.m. the police crime scene van (see the van with the open rear door in the center of photo at top of page) was processing the crime scene.