Young Man Stabbed at Balmoral Hotel

A 24 year old man was stabbed at the Balmoral Hotel on Hastings St. on Friday night at about 11 p.m. He was reportedly trying to break up a fight on the dance floor.

As I look at these photos of police officers at the Balmoral after the stabbing, I'm reminded of something I've been noticing over the past couple of years: female police officers seem short to me, considering that there is a large pool of big women to hire from. I mentioned that to the late Tom Green, who was caretaker of Strathcona Park and then Robson Park, and he said that was because there's a lot of nepotism at the VPD and they're hiring one another's daughters. The lower height requirement also allows them to hire more Asian officers, male and female.

On a positive note, the woman who sent me these photos reported that police didn't bother her when she was taking them. It's been a struggle, but the VPD under Chief Jim Chu are getting more respectful of the Charter right of citizens to take photos at crime scenes. In the past many VPD officers didn't want their photos taken and photographers were being harassed, even grabbed.

Arrests made in Tyson Edwards Murder

Early this year, the DTES Enquirer ran a post about Jim, a Carnegie regular who picks bottles and cans in the bar district on weekends, being upset at coming across Tyson Edwards lying in the curb by Richards on Richards nightclub. Edwards had been stabbed in front of friends and later died in hospital. Jim talked about the incident for weeks afterward because he was under the impression that Edwards could have been saved if emergency response times had been quicker.

Today, I heard on the radio that police made three arrests in the murder. Two men were arrested in Calgary and one in Moncton, N.B. All have been charged with manslaughter and returned to Vancouver. The police said these three men, if not exactly gang members, were involved in gang-type activity. Edwards was not.

Jim says that while picking bottles in the bar district over the years he has seen lots of dangerous stuff, like gun fire in an alley, that never gets reported in the newspapers.

Downtown Eastside Man Collecting Beer Cans says Police Ignored Stabbing Victim Bleeding to Death on Street

When I read that a Vancouver Police spokesman told reporters that Tyson Edwards had been “rushed” to hospital after being stabbed around 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 1, I thought of a man collecting beer bottles and cans that night who tells a different story.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Roughly ten days after 21 year old Tyson Edwards, who was becoming a dog-trainer like his father who has worked with the dogs of Marilyn Manson and Sheryl Crow, was stabbed to death outside Richards on Richards nightclub in Vancouver, I heard Jim A. talking about how the cops hadn’t seemed too interested.  ”Are you talking about that young Black guy who got stabbed?”, I asked Jim when I overheard his conversation in the Carnegie Library on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.  I had seen the victim’s mother on the front page of the Vancouver Sun pleading for witnesses to come forward, and his father who had come up from Los Angeles standing in the background. “He was Black or East Indian,” Jim said, “It happened two weekends ago; there’s a memorial outside Richards on Richards.”  He was talking about Tyson Edwards.                                                                                                                                                                                                         Jim, a thin white guy in his fifties, who unlike some Downtown Eastsiders doesn’t make a habit of criticizing police, had been walking around downtown collecting empty beer cans and bottles.  He arrived at Richards on Richards just after Edwards was stabbed.  ”I saw him lying in the curb,” says Jim, who didn’t witness the actual stabbing. There were no police or other emergency workers there yet.  ”I felt for the guy…As soon as I saw him, I could see he needed an ambulance.  ”Take it easy”, Jim said to Edwards and then went for help. “The first thing on my mind was the guy needed an ambulance”.  As Jim walked away, he heard somebody yelling, “He’s dying, he’s dying.”               

                                                   

Photo: A VPD constable at Richards on Richards on Sunday, Feb. 1.  Edwards had been stabbed at roughly 2:30 that morning.

Jim told the doorman at Richards on Richards that there was a man who needed an ambulance. "I told the door man, the Black door man, he was the first one I told,” Jim says.  ”He just ignored me.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

“Then a cop pulled up and I said, ‘This guy needs an ambulance, he’s been stabbed in the chest and he’s bleeding; they [the people with Edwards] rolled him over, he needs an ambulance right now’.”  Jim dipped his hand into his pocket to imitate the constable’s response: “He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his radio and says, ‘I need back up.’  And he puts the radio back in his pocket.”  He didn’t call for an ambulance.                                                                                                                                                                                       

“I was kind of frantic to get an ambulance right away”, Jim says.  

Jim went up to another white male cop, “a big, bald, guy” who had just arrived, and told him that there was a guy over there that needed an ambulance right away, that he’d been stabbed in the chest.  ”He friggin’ ignored me,” Jim says.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Next Jim approached a white female cop who was talking to a civilian male; she was either checking his ID or searching him; Jim couldn't remember exactly.  He told her that there was a guy over there who needed an ambulance right away, that he had been stabbed in the chest.  But she, like the male cops, ignored him. “She was more interested in crowd control”, Jim said in a disgusted tone of voice.”                                                                                                                                                                                                           

I told at least three cops and none of them paid any attention”, Jim says.  He was clearly still upset.  I heard him telling his story to friends on three separate occasions.   

Maybe somebody had already called 911 and the police knew that an ambulance was on the way, I said.  Jim replied that he had noticed people with cell phones but, based on his estimation that “15 to 20 minutes” passed before an ambulance arrived, he speculates that they may have asked for police, not an ambulance.  ”It took so dammed long for the ambulance to get there, I couldn’t believe it.”  He said there is a building just a few blocks from there where ambulances are dispatched and he believes he could have walked over there, gotten hold of some ambulance attendants and walked back, and “would have been there faster than the ambulance.”  [Ambulance paramedics recently threatened to strike, one of their grievances being that ambulance response times are becoming slower.]                                                                                                                                                                      

Regardless of whether an ambulance was in transit, Jim believes police should have checked on Edwards right away, after being told that he had been stabbed and needed immediate medical help.  He says Edwards was obscured from the view of police by “a crowd of Black guys standing around him.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Jim was amazed at the amount of back-up that arrived for police.  ”I’ve seen back up before but I’ve never seen so much back-up. There were cop cars everywhere, lights flashing, paddy wagons, but no ambulance.”      

                                                                    Photo:  Tyson Edwards' mother points to a photo of the two of them at his funeral in Burnaby.                                                                                                                                            

Jim was “perturbed” by the conduct of police as the victim lay bleeding on the curb and would later mention it to a journalist at the scene.  ”I told the CBC guy about it and he just laughed.  I said, ‘It’s not funny, a guy lost his life’.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Jim readily acknowledges that he’d had a bit to drink that night. “But I wasn’t drunk,” he says. When he’s picking cans and bottles on weekends, he explained, it’s common to find a half empty mickey or bottle of wine that bar-goers have left in an alley or parking lot.  He generally sips on one while he walks around picking cans.  Jim has lived on the Downtown Eastside for 30 years and he is known as a guy who enjoys going to the Pacific or the Regent Hotel to drink beer.  But he is not known to get aggressive or nasty when he drinks.  And he’s not a drug user; he even hates marijuana.                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Before the ambulance arrived, Jim left the scene and walked around the block picking up more cans and bottles.  When he passed by Richards on Richards again, he saw that the ambulance had arrived.  ”The ambulance was there; it was behind yellow tape”, he said in a low voice.                                                                                                                                                                          There’s an old tv show in which each episode ends with a male voice saying, “There are eight million stories in the naked city, you’ve just heard one of them.”  There are also millions of sides to those stories.  You’ve just heard one of them.     

Man Stabbed Near Carnegie Center This Evening

A man was stabbed in the back on Main St., just a little south of Carnegie Center where Chinatown begins, at around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.  The victim was pressing his hand against his wound.  

Smokers sitting on the Carnegie outdoor patio went over to the railing to gawk at the police and amublance arriving.  Police had yellow tape around the crime scene but have since taken it down.

Drug dealers and users hang around on that area of the sidewalk.  

Man Stabbed in Eye at Savoy Pub

Photo above: A Vancouver Police officer guards the door of the Savoy Pub this afternoon.

A man was reportedly stabbed in the eye this afternoon at the Savoy Pub on Hasting St., just east of Main & Hastings.

According to a witness, police took everybody out of the pub, stopping traffic to get them across the street to the police station for questioning.


The Savoy Pub is close to Main & Hastings, seen in the background.

Photo above: Vancouver Police officer guarding door of Savoy Pub this afternoon chats with a passerby. He was turning people away as they arrived to enter the pub.

Vancouver Rookie Cop Enters Women's Washroom With Gun Pulled

Over the weekend, a guy got stabbed in the leg in front of Carnegie Center, where a swarm of people sell drugs or just hang out. The guy appeared to have been stabbed in a major artery.

A Carnegie Security guard, a tall guy with white hair, was helping the paramedic by holding the torque on the injured man’s leg.

Then a rookie Vancouver Police officer comes along. He tells the plain clothes security guard to back off. But the Security guard was preventing the guy from bleeding to death, so he tells the cop that he works on security.

The cop asks where the guy was stabbed. The security guard told him that it was by the women’s washroom, although the trail of blood made it obvious where he had been stabbed. There is an underground women’s washroom near the Carnegie front steps; women say it’s a clean washroom and a City worker sits down there to make certain nobody shoots up or causes trouble.

"The cop pulls out his gun," said a Carnegie regular in amazement,"and goes down to the women’s washroom." As if anybody would get away with hiding in the women's washroom with so many people standing around, he added.

Another guy from the neighborhood said, “That cop has been watching too much tv.”

Whiskeyjack Murder Suspect Picked Up on Downtown Eastside

Last night on the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver police picked up "a person of interest" in the murder of Marilyn Whiskeyjack. Constable Tim Fanning told CKNW that a male was arrested and is being questioned "but at this time there are no charges." Police believe Whiskeyjack knew her attacker.

A Carnegie member pointed out yesterday that with Crime Stoppers willing to pay up to $2,000 for a tip and it being over a week before welfare cheques are issued, "there are going to be some hungry drug addicts". One of them might be tempted to tip police, he said.

Whiskeyjack was stabbed in Main Room at 117 Main St. late Friday night. She died an hour later in hospital.

Whiskeyjack's murder is Vancouver's 15th homicide this year.

Man at Cobalt Hotel Attacked With Hatchet

Why would the cops call a man hit over the head with a hatchet lucky? Because he walked away with only minor injuries. Late Friday night, the 49-year old man was attacked at the seedy Cobalt Hotel at 917 Main St. where he was staying on the Downtown Eastside. A 26 year old man is facing charges for the assault.

Jim A. who has lived at the Cobalt for years was attacked there a few months back. He makes a point of not mixing with the other tenants because many of them are crackheads. But when a native woman asked Jim, a fifty-something caucasian guy, to store a few bags of her belongings in his room, he agreed to help her out. She later returned to pick up the bags and he wasn't there. There has been a misunderstanding. She was angry and told him so later, throwing his dishes and other things around in his room to drive the point home. But Jim is very slow to anger. "I guess she could see she wasn't getting to me," he said. She pulled out a knife and sunk it deep into his forearm. He was spraying blood and as he was pushing the door at the top of the hallway stairs open, he was holding the cut with his opposite hand to stem the flow of blood. He lost his balance and fell, cracking his ribs. He went to the hospital and to this day has a bit of numbness in his hand, although he has made an almost full recovery.

Jim couldn't take a job he had lined up as a forklift operator the next day. He didn't call the cops because he said, "I don't want to be a rat."

Guess what the woman who stabbed him did a week later? She asked him if she could store some of her stuff in his room.

Garrett: the mechanic who tried to save Chris Poeung

Remember Garrett, the mechanic who went over to help 13 yr. old Chris Poeung after he got stabbed? Garrett Gustafson used his bare hands to apply pressure to the wound near Chris’ heart and kept the pressure on for at least ten minutes, until the paramedics arrived. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to save Chris.

I saw Garrett, a short, young looking 43 yr. old with green-brown eyes and light brown hair, this evening when I dropped into McDonalds at Terminal and Main for a coffee. Garrett was having a snack and a coffee before he did some mechanical work on a van in the parking lot that belongs to Tom, another guy who drops in regularly for coffee.

Garrett is a third generation mechanic. Both his father and his maternal grandfather were mechanics. He learned the trade in high school in Winnipeg.

Garrett told me that reporters from The Province newspaper had tracked him down today. I knew they were looking for him because a reporter had e-mailed me trying to locate him. She said she had seen Garrett's name on my blog posting about the Chris Poeung stabbing in the parking lot next door to McDonalds. I had revealed on the blog that Garrett worked at a local car repair shop, but I didn't mention the name. I didn't know the name. Province reporters went to garage after garage in the neighbourhood until they found him at "Nic's" over near Cambie. (Nic's stands for "Non-intimidating Car Service".) Garrett agreed to meet with a Province reporter at McDonald’s after work.

The Province reporter had asked Garrett if he would meet in the parking lot where flowers now lie on the spot where Chris lay bleeding. Garrett looked at me, shaking his head and grimacing, indicating that he had not wanted to go over there.

"Did The Province take a photograph of you?", I asked Garrett. "About a hundred", he responded. When the photos were being taken, he said, "I held my McDonald’s coffee cup in front of me the whole time". Maybe McDonalds will return the favor by giving me free coffee, he said, grinning.

I told Garrett that the Province reporter had called him “heroic” in her e-mail to me. He didn't respond much to that. But Ric, a crusty 75 year old who regularly drops into McDonalds for coffee and has a teenager son of his own, had earlier weighed in on this: “The kid died; Garrett would have been a hero if the kid had lived”. But then again Ric was still peeved with Garrett for being too tired last night to help him fix his car.

Don, who has had coffee with Garrett at McDonalds and sold him a mountain bike he no longer used, believes that what Garrett did was indeed heroic: "He helped save that kid long enough for the doctors to get to him. I bet we'll see him up for some kind of medal."

I had not run into Garrett since last Saturday when I saw him applying pressure to stem the flow of blood from Chris Poeung's chest in the parking lot. Garrett told me when I chatted with him this evening, that he had said a prayer for Chris as he pressed on his wound, but not out loud. He had said the prayer for Chris after seeing "a woman saying a prayer over him", out loud in Spanish. “Is that what that woman was doing?,” I asked. I had mentioned that woman on my blog; I had reported seeing her kneeling by Chris' head, one hand on each side of his head, talking to him "softly, continuously". She had dark hair. I didn’t realize at the time that she was saying a prayer. I didn’t even realize that she was speaking Spanish as I didn’t listen too closely.

Garrett has no children. But he says he would definitely like to have some.

Garrett, who grew up on Ukranian food in a family of six children in Winnipeg, was asked by The Province if he had a message for Chris Poeung’s parents. The only thing I could say, he told me, his face and voice turning sad, was “God Bless, I’m sorry for your loss.” And knowing Garrett, he meant it. "I was traumatized when my father died when I was eight," he told me. His father died of a brain tumor six months after a machine that he was using to drill through ice flew up and hit him on the head. As an adult, when Garrett got a call from his mother in Winnipeg saying she wasn't feeling well, he said, “I’m coming to see you." He got on a bus. She died a week and a half later. "I just loved her so much," he says.

When Chris was taken away in the ambulance, Garrett says, "I thought he had a 60-40 chance." "A 40% chance to live?", I asked. "A 60% chance", Garrett responded. I was surprised that he had been that optimistic. Earlier, when I had mentioned that in the parking lot I was afraid that Chris had died when, for a few moments, his entire body went absolutely still -- something I don't think I will ever forgot -- Garrett raised his eyebrows slightly and nodded, saying softly, "I saw that too." I felt relieved to hear him say that. I don't know why, but I needed to know that I wasn't the only one who had witnessed those few moments.

The thing that haunts me about seeing Chris Poeung lying in that parking lot is whether anything more could have done more to help him survive. There were so many people around Chris – several of us being adults -- but none of us, other than Garrett, seemed to know first aid. Don told me the other night that the first aid course Garrett, whose paternal grandfather was a general practitioner, had taken was probably one of those short ones that last a day, minus lunch and smoke breaks.

That’s exactly what Garrett had taken. He told me he had taken his first aid course at the Newton Advocacy Group Society. “It was an 8 hr. course, very extensive”, he said, “Class 3”. The Newton Advocacy Group, Garrett explained, is a government funded organization that gives free first aid courses and helps women find employment. "And they help homeless people get back on their feet", Garrett said. "And that's me." Garrett became homeless when the boat squatters in False Creek got evicted. But he has an apartment in Surrey now and comes in to work on the Sky Train, his bike in tow.

I mentioned to Don the other night that I had been puzzled by the fact that Chris had a gaping cut, about ¾” long and fairly deep, on the base of his chin – it could have been a stab wound -- but it wasn’t bleeding. The absence of bleeding could have been a sign, Don thought, that not enough blood was flowing upwards to his head. He would have elevated Chris’ feet, he said, to get blood flowing away from his feet and legs and towards the more vital areas of his body like his head. I could have put my pack sack under his feet, I thought.

Don also told me that it’s important to keep an injured person warm when they’re going into shock, and it sounded to him like Chris had been going into shock, as they can start getting hypothermia. When I told Garrett about Don’s suggestion, he responded, “It was warm out that day.” Garrett was right; it had been a sunny day. But Chris was lying on the pavement in the parking lot and I wish now that I had put my thick sweater over him, at least over the side of his chest that Garrett wasn't applying pressure to. “He was lying on that cold pavement for at least 10 minutes,” I reminded Garrett.

Mentioning the length of time Chris had been lying in the parking lot, prompted me to add that the paramedics seemed to take longer than usual to get there. “Yeah,” Garrett said solemnly. “It seemed like it took them at least 10 minutes to get there, maybe 12 minutes”, I said. Garrett shook his head in agreement. First the Fire Department paramedics had arrived and, about five minutes later, the ambulance. “I’ve seen ambulances called for junkies on the street that seem to arrive much faster”, I said. Garrett, who lived for some time in this neighbourhood, again shook his head in agreement. We didn’t criticize the paramedics though; we don’t know exactly what they were up against, except that they were traveling in a Saturday rush hour on a holiday long weekend. But anybody who has lived for years on the Downtown Eastside gets accustomed to seeing ambulances called and gets a sense of the usual response time.

Barry Miller, a pensioner who had been walking next to me on the sidewalk when the stabbing occurred, says he saw the ambulance initially stop at the opposite side of the parking lot where other, less seriously injured, teenagers were standing. “That ambulance went to the far corner of the parking lot first," he said. "I saw it stop where some of the other kids were; there were four kids stabbed, you know.”

After talking to The Province, Garrett was second guessing himself about one thing he had said. When the reporter asked him what he thought the boy accused of stabbing Chris should be charged with, Garrett responded, “Murder.” “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that”, he told me. He thought about it for a short time, though, and added, “But I was being honest”.

I told Garrett that Don also believes that second degree murder is the right charge. When I mentioned to Don that Chris had a deep open wound on his chin that looked like it had come from a knife, he had responded with surprise, “That kid was stabbed more than once? If you stab somebody more than once, it means you’re trying to kill them. And if you stab them in the chin, it means you were probably going for their throat.” On the other hand, people who know the accused boy say he was trying to defend himself in a situation in which he felt outnumbered and did not set out to kill anyone.

“So, do you think you’ll buy a Province paper tomorrow?", Garrett asked me. I'll probably just grab one of the free ones lying around in McDonalds when I drop in for coffee, I told him. I'll show it to Don if I see him.

I agree with Don's conclusion about what Garrett achieved with his first aid intervention on Chris Poeung: "He kept that kid alive long enough for his family to see him before he died."

[Update: The interview with Garrett wasn't in Friday's Province, although the reporter had told him that it would run Friday. "I guess they missed the deadline," Garrett said. Don, who worked as a journalist years back, believes The Province will still run that story: "They went to alot of expense to find Garrett. Those were well paid reporters they had out there looking for him."]

Boy, 14, to be charged with 2nd degree homicide in death of 13 yr. old

The Vancouver teen accused of fatally stabbing Chris Poeung will be charged with second degree homicide, VPD Constable Tim Fanning told reporters today, not manslaughter as originally anticipated.

"The new charge means the prosecution will allege the youngster used a weapon that he should have known could cause death", the Globe and Mail reported.

The accused 14 year old will remain in jail until his appearance in provincial youth court on Tuesday.

Teenagers Visit Parking Lot Memorial for Chris Poeung

A large mound of about 20 bouquets of flowers appeared today on the pavement in the parking lot across from the Main St. Skytrain Station. The flowers appeared at the exact spot where Chris Poeung, 13, lay after being fatally stabbed late yesterday afternoon, allegedly by a 14 year old boy.

All afternoon, teenagers came and went. They stood around the bouquets of flowers in the almost empty parking lot, talking, in the Vancouver drizzle. There were neatly printed messages on some of the bouquets at their feet:

"R.I.P. baby bro,
I love you lots and I miss you."
Melay

"You were like a brother to me."
Annie Tran

"...you will never be forgotten."
Deanna Tran

At about 6:15 p.m., when I last went by, there were 10 young people standing by the bouquets.

A tree at the edge of the parking lot, a few meters south of the mound of flowers on the pavement, had a new, white, spray-painted message on it: a heart and below it the large letters, "R.I.P. C.P." A piece of yellow police tape lay twisted on the grass below. Nearby on the grass, somebody had placed a round container of bright pink flowers.

Local residents dropping into McDonalds next door for coffee were talking about the fact that Chris Poeung had died. Barry, a pensioner who has lived on Downtown Eastside for 30 years said that after leaving McDonalds yesterday, one of the Asian teenagers was in such a hurry to get out of that parking lot that, "He almost knocked me over." But Barry is street smart. He believes there is a history between some of these teenagers that we don't know about: "Somebody doesn't just start stabbing people for no reason."

CTV has since spoken to Chris Poeung's girlfriend, Cathy Le, who said the fight that resulted in Poeung's death was over a girl. But Poeung was not even directly involved, she said.

Stabbing Near McDonalds Leaves Boy, 13, Dead

Update:
Stabbing victim, Chris Poeung, died late last night in hospital. He was born Mar. 3, 1994 and was 13 years old.

Witnesses saw the suspect leave the scene of the stabbing and hop on the #19 bus. Police reportedly took him off the bus as it headed up Kingsway. There are reports that a second person was also taken into custody but released.

There were a total of four teenagers stabbed. Three had injuries that were not life threatening.

The following article was posted yesterday, shortly after I left the scene of the stabbing.
----------------------------------------

A teenage girl called her mother today and told her to come to the parking lot at Terminal & Main. Her brother, Chris Poeung, had just been stabbed.

It was about 5:15 or 5:20 p.m. I had just left McDonalds next door with a take-out coffee in my hand. I saw a swarm of Asian teenagers, both male and female, crossing the parking lot at Main & Terminal -- the parking lot kitty corner from the Pacific Central Station -- headed towards McDonalds. Some of the boys in the huge group were fighting. But it seemed to be over quickly.

Then I saw about three boys looking back as they rushed from the parking lot, at least one of them holding a cell phone. I got the impression that for them this fight wasn't over. But I really didn't pay much attention and kept walking.

Then I heard some girls in the parking lot screaming as they stood over an individual lying on the pavement. I went over to see if I could help. There was a pool of blood around a young Asian man in a white track suit. The white top of his track suit was soaked in blood. It was obvious that he had been stabbed near the heart. He had also been stabbed on the chin.

I told the victim to hang on, that an ambulance was on the way. I kept repeating that. I had read about an accident victim who said that having a person beside them reassuring them that the ambulance was on the way was helpful. The victim seemed to have almost lost consciousness, and by the time help arrived would be completely unconscious. One of the teenage girls standing near the victim's feet began crying, a scared sounding crying.

Later another woman passerby crouched down and put her hands on the sides of the victim's head and talked softly to him, continuously. Yet another woman passing by was on her cell phone to police saying, "I didn't realize that I had witnessed a stabbing."

A young woman with long dark hair who looked like a teenager came over. She said she was the victim's sister. She had apparently not witnessed the stabbing but may have been with the large group of teenagers as it took her just a couple of minutes to get to the scene. She screamed for a second when she saw the massive amount of blood that her brother was lying in. A couple of minutes later, she got on her cell phone and called her mother. She was crouched beside me as she made the call asking her mother to come to the parking lot across from the Main St. Skytrain station, saying, "Somebody's been stabbed." She must have been pressed to provide more information over the phone as she then stated in a calm voice that it was Chris who had been stabbed.

"The suspect", I would later hear a female police officer say into her phone, "goes to Tupper School." I believe the officer also identified him as "Thai."

Just a few seconds after I had arrived in the parking lot to see if I could help, I noticed a local mechanic, Garrett, on his knees by the victim. Garrett, a very young looking 43 year old originally from Winnipeg, works at a car repair shop nearby and drops into McDonald's almost daily to have coffee with local residents.

Garrett was using his bare hands to apply pressure over the wound by the victim's heart. He kept his hands there until the fire department paramedics arrived about 10 minutes later.

Later as he washed the blood off his hands with a cleansing gel police had given him, I asked Garrett, who I know from the McDonalds koffee klatch, "How did you know to do that?" He said he had taken a first aid course as "a form of self-improvement" two months ago out in Surrey where he has just moved. (He used to live on a boat behind McDonalds in False Creek, until all the boat squatters got evicted.) "That was good timing," I said.

It had seemed to take a long time for the paramedics to arrive: I would say 10-12 minutes, but I wasn't wearing a watch. And because everybody standing around was desperately waiting for the ambulance, time may have seemed to go slowly. The Vancouver Police were first to arrive, then the Fire Department paramedics, then the first of two ambulances. When the first police car arrived, I said to the female officer, "Where's the ambulance? We've been waiting ten minutes." She ignored me and looked at the victim.

The female police officer made the same call that a number of others had already made on cell phones, a request for an ambulance. She said into her phone, as she squatted by the victim's head, he was "not doing well." The officer then took over the job of talking to the victim. At one point, I thought the victim had died; he went completely still but then seemed to get a second wind and took a couple of deep breaths. I said to his sister, "You talk to him, he knows your voice." She leaned in toward him and started to speak but the police officer told her to move back and give him more space. The officer continued talking to him.

When the first paramedics from the Fire Department did get to the victim, three of them worked swiftly and calmly, putting a clear plastic mask over his mouth and cutting off his blood-drenched shirt. About five minutes later, the ambulance showed up. Then a woman showed up, who I believe may have been the mother of the victim. She stood outside the yellow police tape surrounding the scene and spoke to the sister.

A second victim, a young male with a bloody wound to his arm, sat on a curb in the parking lot near where the first had been laying. He was tended to by paramedics and may have been put in a second ambulance that arrived.

A young male police officer politely gave the order that nobody was to leave the scene. Police corralled everybody at the side of the parking lot, on the grass. They spoke to the sister and several witnesses, many of whom were teenagers. After about 10 minutes, police let me go as I had really not paid attention to the faces of any of those involved in the fight.

Garrett was still trying to get the blood off his hands. He pointed to the bottle of cleansing gel on the grass and asked, "Could you squirt more of that on my hands?"

A stocky, middle-aged firemen walked over to us and asked Garrett for his name, after the ambulance had left. The fireman commented that the victim had lost a lot of blood. He made a point of commending Garrett: "That kid has a chance because of you."