Gunman shoots at witness' home

Two men wearing bullet-proof vests were arrested by Richmond RCMP shortly after an early Tuesday morning drive-by shooting at a north Richmond house.

Investigators believe the intended target was a 21-year-old man who was about to testify in an extortion-related preliminary hearing scheduled to begin a few hours later.

Three shotgun blasts shattered three windows, including one just two metres away from the futon on which the witness had been sleeping.

"My ears were ringing," said the man's sister, who also lives in the house. "I thought it was a bomb or something."

The Richmond Review cannot publish details of the preliminary hearing, including the name of the witness or that of his family members, because of a court-ordered ban on publication.

The witness's older sister was asleep shortly before 2 a.m. when the phone unexpectedly rang.

It was an urgent call for her younger brother and she passed the phone to him in his bedroom, which is at the front of the house.

"He called to warn him," the sister said of the early morning caller who is a friend of her brother.

A few minutes later, she heard three blasts ring out, one fired inches above her head, leaving a living room wall peppered with more than a dozen shotgun pellets. Another shot struck a window beside the front door, with the third shattering the window in her brother's room and spraying pellets in a hallway.

According to the shaken family, police investigators recovered shotgun shells on the family's lawn.

The sister said some men had been trying to find out where her brother lives, and had asked her brother's friend. When that friend refused to say, the men left, but then later returned to say they had obtained his address. The friend then called with the early morning warning.

A witness spotted a Ford Explorer leaving the scene and police were able to locate two suspects in the area of Highway 99 and Rice Mill Road in south Richmond. They were arrested without incident, although no charges have been laid. Police said the two men are from North Delta and east Vancouver.

There were six people in the home at the time of the shooting but none were injured.

Despite the threat, the witness, who was escorted by a plainclothes police officer, went ahead and testified in the preliminary hearing of Gurkirpal Paul Khela.

Security at Richmond Provincial Court was visibly heightened, with a metal detector in use for only the second time in several years.

Khela is charged with uttering threats, extortion and theft of a motor vehicle stemming from a series of incidents in September of last year.

Details of the trial were banned from publication.