Railway Ave events - well, just one really.

I never knew the sleepy little mountain town of Canmore had so many police cars until this afternoon (admittedly, some may have come from elsewhere).  I haven't seen so many decked out glorified-Crown Vics in one spot since the San Diego mugging incident that kicked my travels off eighteen or so months ago.  At least this time, I'm not nearly as involved - although the result is somewhat more shocking, but also strangely distant (literally & figuratively).  This story kicks off over the weekend with a couple of armed robberies around town coming out of nowhere.  One was of a tanning salon just off Main Street; I'm still confused why one would hold up a salon for cash, surely they don't have that much.  But then I'm not sure I could ever start to understand the mentality that says it's a good idea to rob someone using a pistol or anything else, or nothing at all for that matter.

First I knew about all this was yesterday when we were wandering around town looking at/for various pieces of gear & there seemed to be an unusually high number of Mounties wandering around (without breaking into chorus).  This was pretty much the police going around warning the local businesses of the fact that there was a gun-toting robber around town.

Fast-forward to this afternoon & I was thinking nothing more of it & I was happily ensconced at home finishing Watership Down (which was brilliant, nothing to do with shipping & everything to do with rabbits) & doing my shoulder exercises when I noticed something about a RCMP shooting on my Canmore feed.  Low & behold the cops had pulled over the robbery suspect, he fired a couple of shots & they shot him back.  Just as disturbing was that this was right at the end of our driveway - Steve had to get an escort through the cordon just to get home.  Once again, I'm mystified why you would be out robbing people when it's -20ºC outside.  As this was only a few hours ago details are still a little hazy, but it seems that it was the robbery suspect that was shot & who subsequently died.  So at least it wasn't someone more innocent, as such, but it still fairly stinks. 

So after all that, here's how close it was.  At the start of this video you can just see my car, that I'd parked twenty minutes beforehand, just behind that little white Chevy SUV on the left.  In the second photo in this story, you can see our driveway on the far side of the road.  A little close to home - so it's nice to be sitting around with friends doing nothing in particular.  Also, Finn was gracious enough not to return some of his dinner on to my trousers, drool on to my head or slobber all over my sweater tonight.  Considering someone jabbed him with all sorts of immunizations today, he's been rather good.