Neighbour recalls night two Edmonton police officers were killed outside her door
A woman who lives across from the apartment where a 16-year-old shot and killed two Edmonton police constables has multiple bullet holes in her door, with a couple piercing her doorframe.
On Monday, Darlene Blyan showed CTV News Edmonton at least six bullet holes in her doorway, remnants from last Thursday's shooting where Constables Brett Ryan and Travis Jordan were killed.
She recalled waking up after midnight to loud noises and the feeling her apartment was shaking.
"I thought my pictures were coming off my walls," Blyan described. "Then I thought someone was kicking my door.
"Then I heard, ‘oh, oh my god, oh my god, about four or five times,’" she added.
The Edmonton Police Service says Ryan and Jordan were dispatched after reports of a domestic dispute. There was no indication a weapon was inside the apartment they responded to, nor that the situation could become violent.
The pair of officers met the 16-year-old's mother outside the Inglewood complex. When Ryan and Jordan were outside the suite, police say they were "immediately incapacitated."
The pair of Edmonton Police Service officers killed on Thursday, March 16, 2023 (Source: EPS).
After what Blyan later learned was a shooting, police officers knocked on her door and instructed her to stay inside her suite.
Thirty minutes later, investigators informed her she would have to leave her home for the next several days as the area was an active crime scene. She was put up in a hotel and just returned home Sunday afternoon.
Blyan, who has lived in the building for three years, said she knew the mother of the teen shooter, who remains in hospital.
According to police, the mother was shot by her son during a struggle for the firearm he used to shoot the pair of officers.
"We would talk in the laundry room and talked about our life," Blyan said. "We would sit on the steps and have a smoke and just talk about everything.
One bouquet of flowers stands outside the doors of the Inglewood apartment complex where last Thursday two police constables were fatally shot (CTV News Edmonton).
"She was easy to talk to," Blyan added. "She's a nice woman."
Since returning, Blyan told CTV News Edmonton she couldn't stop thinking about how she decided to stay in bed that fateful night.
"Good thing I didn't look through the peephole," she said as she pointed to the bullet hole below it.
A regimental funeral and procession for Ryan and Jordan has been scheduled for Monday, March 27.
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Nahreman Issa
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