Concern rising over gun incidents in North Bay

There is a lot of concern in the Lake Heights-Sage area of the city today as the neighbourhoods digest an early morning shooting at Holy Cross school.

A 21-year-old man is in custody and is in bail court today, another person is in hospital with serious injuries from a gunshot wound.

See: Good Samaritan heard gunshot, saw victim down, called 911

And: 21-year-old arrested in overnight schoolyard shooting

"It is concerning to everyone who lives in North Bay, but we can say that this is an isolated incident and also that the two parties were known to each other, so this wasn't just some random act, but it definitely is concerning," police spokesman Merv Shantz told reporters this afternoon. "We know that the citizens of North Bay aren't used to this type of violence, and neither are we, and we want to make sure that they feel safe nighttime and daytime walking around the town."

Shantz says anything that happens in southern Ontario eventually filters to the north and local police have seen an increase in guns here over the past number of years.

"We take pride in knowing that our officers are always out there looking for weapons that are on the street. They gain intelligence from the community and we try our very best to take these guns off the street before they end up in a shooting incident such as the one that happened this morning."

As of Wednesday afternoon, criminal investigators continue to look into the incident and don't have all the facts. "There's still people that they need to speak to in relation to the incident, so I can't comment any further on what may have caused the incident."

Shantz hopes to have some more information later this week, but he emphasized that the four people involved had nothing to do with the school.

"This wasn't any kind of school-related incident. It just happened to be that this was where they were congregating at the time. We did, in fact, have the school remain closed for the day."

Shantz says in these types of incidents, information from the public is critical and the street crime unit officers have their ears to the ground and work closely with members of the community, just gaining information.

"These criminals that live in southern Ontario think they can come to North Bay, being a smaller centre, but we've we like to send a message to them that when they do arrive, you know we're here and we don't take these things lightly. And we conduct investigations thoroughly and we make sure that these people end up behind bars."