No shots were fired in relation to a rollover crash in Burnaby Wednesday night, according to police.
Burnaby RCMP dispatched 10 cars to the area of Kingsway and Stride Avenue shortly before 11 p.m. after getting reports of possible shots fired, according to media spokesperson Cpl. Mike Kalanj.
He said there had also been reports of a fight and someone being held to the ground.
In the end, however, police found only a serious rollover crash involving a single vehicle.
“It just hit a curb and flipped, hit a tree. Then the tree fell on it," Kalanj told the NOW.
Firefighters responding to the crash got a “wait order,” according to assistant fire Chief Greg Young, and cut a person out of the vehicle once police had determined there was no threat of gunfire in the area.
BC Ambulance paramedics took the patient to hospital in "serious condition," according to BC Emergency Health Services.
The driver was a 23-year-old man and the vehicle's only occupant, according to Burnaby RCMP.
Kalanj said police found no evidence of gunshots or a fight at the scene.
“Zero, absolutely none,” he said.
With a spate of gang-related shootings in the Lower Mainland in recent weeks, including a fatal shooting in Burnaby just last weekend, he said area residents are likely more attuned than usual to the possibility of hearing gunshots.
“I think what’s happened here is the public is hypervigilant on this kind of thing and believed that there was another shooting,” Kalanj said. “Whatever the sound was, I don’t know, but that’s what they thought, and we treated it as such. We sent many more cars than we usually would to an accident.”
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