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A 41-year-old man faces charges after the second fatal shooting in Stratford in less than 11 weeks.
Stratford police and Perth County paramedics were called to 475 Ontario St. on Tuesday just before 5 a.m., Stratford police Const. Aaron Mounfield said. A 35-year-old woman was found unresponsive after being shot and was taken to Stratford General Hospital, where she died.
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The man was arrested at the home, just around the corner from King Street, which was cordoned off with police tape Tuesday as police remained at the scene to investigate.
Police called the shooting an “isolated incident” and said there’s no threat to public safety. More information will be released Wednesday, police said.
The shooting comes almost 11 weeks after Ricky Bilcke fatally shot Jonathan Bennett and wounded two others — Stephanie Irvine and David Tokley — before turning the gun on himself after a Bradshaw Drive neighbour dispute turned deadly.
Prior to this year, Stratford’s last homicide was in 2005, when Nik Kerr pleaded guilty to manslaughter after stabbing Todd Ross. The last shooting death in the city before August was in 1993, when George Jackson killed his wife, Catherine, a local teacher.
“Stratford hasn’t had that kind of violence in the recent past,” Stratford police Chief Greg Skinner said in August. “You look at big cities and the news coverage, and you hear about it all the time. We’ve heard about it in Woodstock and St. Thomas, but we, luckily, have been a little bit immune from that level of violence, and now all of a sudden, it is in our community as well.”
Huron-Perth Victim Services executive director Deborah Logue said previously the Bradshaw Drive shooting would affect not only residents of that street but the community as a whole.
“It’s a massive impact and has huge ripple effects of people not feeling safe anymore in the community they live in,” she said. “Even to know this can happen in our area is hard to accept.”
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