COVID-19 gave local police a new way to allay the fears of a Burnaby neighbourhood after it became ground zero for a grisly murder investigation earlier this month.
When police descended on Garden Grove Drive on March 18 and taped off Greentree Village Park and surrounding streets, rumours swirled among local residents.
Local accounts payable manager J. Magas, who lives right across from the park, was eating breakfast when she got an email from a neighbour saying police had taped off the area, so she joined a few others outside to find out more.
“There was talk among us that there was a burning body,” Magas said. “I was shocked. It was very scary because it’s a quiet neighbourhood, and things like that don’t happen.”
It would be days before the body was identified as that of 49-year-old New Westminster resident Ma Cecilia Loreto and first-degree murder charges were laid against 21-year-old Carlo Tobias and a 15-year-old youth.
In the meantime, the neighbours had questions.
“We were just trying to figure out, was it someone from our neighbourhood?” Magas said. “Was it a homeless person? Why? That was the main question – why was it there? Why us?”
The Burnaby RCMP came up with a new way to get them answers and hear their concerns.
The detachment’s community response team and bike squad hand-delivered flyers to homes all over the area, inviting residents to attend a Zoom conference with police and victims services personnel.
At two sessions on Friday and Saturday, neighbours got to find out what happened and talk about their concerns.
“I thought that was really nice that they did that,” Magas said.
She said residents felt better after hearing Integrated Homicide Investigation Team spokesperson Sgt. Frank Jang say the pair charged in the killing had no connection to the park and might never even have been there before taking Loreto’s body there.
She said residents also got the chance to raise questions about the growing memorial that has sprung up near the playground and concerns about how that might impact kids in the neighbourhood.
Victims services manager Aman Gill urged parents struggling with how to have conversations about the incident with their children to reach out to victim services for help.
“Kids will hear about it from a different person, so sometimes it’s best that it come from a person that they trust, which is their parent or family member,” she said.
Gill said the neighbourhood was “extremely impacted” by the incident and the Zoom conference was a great way to reach people who might not have known who to call for help.
Insp. Kathy Hartwig said the online sessions were the result of some quick brainstorming at the Burnaby RCMP detachment.
“We really liked how it felt from a policing perspective and the response we got from the public,” she said.
In all, 46 neighbours logged on Friday and another 12 participated Saturday.
Staff Sgt. Maj. David Douangchanh said the approach may end up being replicated after other major police incidents in the future.
He said Jang had been “very pleased” with the approach and would be recommending it to senior management at North Vancouver RCMP as a possible tool for reaching out to community members in the aftermath of the fatal stabbing spree at the Lynn Valley public library that left one woman dead Saturday.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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