A suspected “barricaded person” in a White Rock home prompted a short but intense police response Friday afternoon.
The response included several marked police cars, an armoured vehicle and a helicopter. Witnesses describing a “hostage situation” reported seeing officers with assault rifles at the scene and roadblocks throughout uptown White Rock.
“It looked like a whole lot, but there was nothing,” Sgt. Manly Burleigh said Monday of activity near Maple Street and Goggs Avenue.
Officers raced to the scene shortly after 3 p.m., surrounded the home and left by 5 p.m.
Former MLA Ken Jones told Peace Arch News the owner of the targeted house told him police were “looking for a known person who had befriended a person who was a tenant of hers.”
While responding officers were treating it as a “mental-health” situation, White Rock detachment issued no public statement that day.
Monday, Burleigh told PAN it was “a non-incident… just a situation that involved what was believed to be a barricaded person.”
“At the end of the day, there was not anybody even in the house, so it was a non-issue.”
The incident drew a crowd of bystanders to Thrift Avenue and Maple Street. Police blocked that intersection and several others, and RCMP vehicles were parked at the Kent Street Activity Centre, which connects to Goggs Avenue.
It was the second incident involving a heavy police presence in the area in just over two weeks. On Jan. 29, a plainclothes officer fired upon a taxi near Finlay Street and Russell Avenue, after investigating a “known crack shack.”
Three people, including the taxi driver, were taken into custody and later released. Investigation into the alleged drug house is ongoing, as is an independent investigation by Coquitlam RCMP into the police-involved shooting.
– with files from Nick Greenizan & Alex Browne