At least one of local MP and his staff are safely locked down in Ottawa following a shooting Wednesday morning at Parliament Hill.
Okanagan-Coquihalla MP Dan Albas was in a Conservative Party caucus meeting at the House of Commons when gunfire erupted just before 7 a.m. PST, according to his constituency assistant, Rudy Enzmann.
“They are now locked down in a location very close to that,” said Enzmann in a phone interview from Albas’s constituency office in Ottawa, which is about a block away from Parliament Hill but locked down nonetheless.
“Pretty much everything within a four-block radius is locked down,” he said.
“All the staff have been instructed to lock doors and windows, barricade doors.”
Enzmann said it’s believed one gunman, who reportedly shot a soldier at the nearby War Memorial, was then killed by police inside the House of Commons.
“I guess the challenge right now is there was witness reports there may have been one, if not two, shooters who were with the original fellow, so the challenge is they are trying to find the other two,” he explained.
A woman who answered the phone at Southern Interior MP Alex Atamanenko’s offices in Oliver said the House of Commons has advised staff to ensure such offices are safe or close them.
No no answered the phone at his offices in Castlegar or Ottawa, and Atamanenko did not immediately reply to an email.
More to come.