Gunshop owner seeks new site for his business Closing residential location THE OWNER of a gunshop in which a man shot himself to death last month is Jooking for a new North Shore location for his business. Frank Macey had operated North Shore Firearms Ltd. for 13 years from the basement of his home located in the 900-block of East 14th Street. Macey decided not to renew his business licence in the wake of the . suicidal shooting. Said Macey, ‘‘I’m either going to get this into a store or I’m go- ing into a different line of business altogether.”’ Although some community concern has been raised regarding the operation of gunshops in resi- dential areas, Macey says the fact that he did business for over a de- cade without ‘‘a speck of trouble” speaks for itself. “The security’ is much better bere. There’s someone here all the time. There’s a big dog in the back. There are extra bars on the doors and windows. The police were always here. There’s a police . car here at least once or twice a day. “They'd get grips for their guns, flashlights — they were some of my customers. If you were a criminal would you fre- quent an area that has police cars there all the time? It’s been pretty good,’ Macey said. Macey said his customers are law-abiding citizens representing a broad cross-section of society. Many of them, he said, are gun collectors. But just after 1 p.m. on April 27 a customer walked in with a problem and 25 rounds in one pocket and eight in another. Macey said the young man first becamte a customer when he bought 2 Glock 19 handgun in October. He. apparently lost his job and sold the gun back to Macey in December. Said Macey, ‘‘He came over on the Monday. (April 27). We chat- By Michael Becker News Reporter ted for a bit. He didn’t seem to be unusual at all. He said he was thinking of purchasing the same type of firearm. I opened the case.”” Macey handed the man an emp- ty gun to examine. The man took the gua and stepped through the doorway of the small two-room shop. When ke got to the doorway Macey heard the action on the gun close. Said Macey, ‘‘I said, ‘Don’t close the action on the gun. You'd better give it back to me.’ He said, ‘No, I need it.’ I said, ‘No, you don’t. I said, ‘You don’t need it, give it back.’ He said, ‘No, I need it.’ So I grabbed him from around the back of the neck and yanked him off the ground.’’ The pair tumbled against a wall. Macey pushed him around side- ways. The man was still holding the loaded gun as Macey wrestled him to a corner near a desk. Macey reached for a can of Capstun, a pepper-derived spray. ““ shook it up and sprayed it in his face because I thought he was stealing the gun. I thought that was his intent, and there is no good purpose of stealing a gun. I sprayed him again, and he escaped,’’ he said. The man stepped a few feet away. Said Macey, ‘‘He was facing me holding the gun towards me. I had one more spray in his face, and he looked at me and just turned around calm as anything. He turned calmly around and said, ‘Frank, this wasn’t for you, it was for me.’ Bang. The gun fell down, and he fell down.”’ Sunday, May 24, 1992 - North Shore News ~ 3 NEWS photo Cindy G Northwood hopefuls GRADE 8 Argyle students (ieft to right) Claudine Ostashek, Nadia Nascimento and Erin Pasnak fill out applications for work as extras on CBC's teen series Northwood. The show was picked up by the network for another season; its producers held an open audition fast Tuesday at their Oasis Cafe set in Lynn Valley. Shooting starts May 28 on the first of 16 new episodes. NVD ald. blasts council Gadsby storms out of meeting over scheduling A CONFLICT over the scheduling of a meeting led to a North Vancouver District alderman storming out of a committee meeting on Tuesday night and vehemently de- nouncing council process. Ald. Joan Gadsby told the News that “I’m wasting my time here.”’ She then called Mayor Murray Dykeman ‘‘weak and ineffectual’’ and described council as “fragmented.” But other council members and the mayor downplayed the issue and accused Gadsby of grand- standing. Said Ald. Ernie Crist, ‘‘I think Joan has problems and has chosen these methods to promote her po- Lawyer calls for inquiry into shooting of NV man in church THE LAWYER for a North Vancouver man shot and injured by a North Vancouver RCMP officer during a break-and-enter investigation earlier this year is calling for a public inquiry into the case. North Vancouver lawyer Dan Sudeyko called for an in- dependent public inquiry fol- lowing an announcement Thursday from B.C.’s attorney general stating that the officer involved will not face a crimi- nal charge over the shooting. Said Sudeyko, ‘‘Under the circumstances this one is more aggravated than the Possee sit- uation in that there was no weapon. Obviously it’s not as tragic as the Possee situation in . that there was no killing. “Pm .very surprised con- sidering Cp!. (Glenn) Magark was charged in a previous situ- ation, the Glover incident. I would have at least expected charges in this matter (Hawkes). I think it makes it that much more important for another process to be in place.” As reported in January in the News, 18-year-old Shayne Hawkes was shot just after midnight on Jan. 17 as By Michael Becker News Reporter members of the North Van- couver RCMP burglary unit investigated a break-in at the Sutherland Bible Chapel on East 19th Street. Various North Vancouver churches had been targeted by thieves during the previous week. Two North Vancouver men were arrested while leaving the chapel. The police recovered property taken from the church. Two RCMP officers entered the church to search for other suspects. One RCMP member, Cpl. Magark, found Hawkes inside the church. Hawkes, who was unarmed, was subse- quently shot in the upper left shoulder. Hawkes appeared in North Vancouver provincial court on Thursday to face a_break- and-enter charge. The presiding judge granted a Crown counsel request for a ban on publication regarding the case. -Randy Wanek, 2!, and Michael Arnold, 19, pleaded guilty to theft-related charges earlier this year. Since the shooting, Magark has been working in an ad- ministrative capacity pending the outcome of the investiga- tions. On Thursday, assistant dep- uty attorney general Bil! Stewart said that Crown and criminal justice branch officials had found that ‘‘the actions of Mr. Hawkes gave Cpl. Magark reasonable grounds, under sec- tion 25(3) of the Criminal Code, to believe that using the firearm was necessary for the purpose of preserving himself from grievous bodily harm.”’ Said North Vancouver RCMP Supt. Bob Byam Fri- day, ‘‘...we think it was thoroughly reviewed, and we think it was a reasoned deci- sion.” Said Byam of Sudeyko’s call for an independent inquiry, ‘‘I have no comment.’’ By Martin Millerchip Contributing Writer litical cause, and that goes beyond criticism of the mayor and coun- cil.” Gadsby was angry that she had received no support in her attempt to postpone a joint meeting of ci- ty and district councils with the “RCMP to review the new police contract. She said she had _ received notification of the potential meeting on May 14 and told the clerk's office the following day of a potential conflict the meeting raised with an invitation she had to the Vancouver Board of Trade’s governor’s banquet. But the proposed May 28 meeting date was not changed, and she was unable to get a se- cond for her motion addressing the issue at Tuesday night’s meeting. Gadsby said she had ‘‘grave concerns about RCMP account- ability’’ and that ‘‘no onc has done more research on the issue.”’ “But why work so hard for something you really believe in to have a process that effectively stymies a council member’s con- tribution?” asked Gadsby. “Elected officials are getting to be like puppets: asked to rubber- stamp this, rubber-stamp that by a self-serving bureaucracy,’? con- tinued Gadsby. Gadsby hores to organize a meeting with representatives from ratepayers associations and wishes that a right of recall existed for Canadian municipalities, “I won't be tarred with the same brush. If taxpayers really care they are going to have to come and do something about it,’’ Gadsby said. Ald. Crist pointed out that crit- icism of the mayor and council was a different issue from that of resolving a scheduling conflict. Neither Crist nor Ald. Paul Turner had. any sympathy for Gadsby’s date conflict. SES SS NORTH VANCOUVER DISTRICT COUNCIL *“*A banquet! What the hell has that to do with council business?”’ asked Crist. And Turner revealed that Gadsby had had her banquet ex- penses approved in-camera on the same night that she was pressing for postponement of the RCMP meeting. . “If she thinks this is so impor- tant, don’t go to the banquet,”’ said Turner, “She stood up, harangued us and then left. We had important business left to conduct. There was the community grants budget with dozens of charitable groups waiting for their municipal grants to be approved. She does this often, and I don’t think that it is the way to get anything done,’’ concluded Turner. : Mayor Dykeman called Gadsby’s behavior disruptive and said she was the only alderman to use a confrontational approach. “‘Ald. Gadsby has walked out - of meetings before because of her emotions. I don’t see that coun- cil's purpose is aided or abetted by all this publicity-stunting,’’ Dykeman said. Dykeman said he had phoned North Vancouver City Mayor Jack Loucks and postponed the May 28 meeting despite the prob- lems involved in rescheduling a meeting for 14 council members, staff and the RCMP. “I am probably being demo- cratically too kind, but I try to give the rights of the aldermen the first priority,’’ said Dykeman. Contacted for her reaction to the postponement of the RCMP meeting, Gadsby said, ‘‘I am very, very pleased. To have gone ahead without me would have been bad faith.” Gadsby described Dykeman as “a really super guy’? but again called him ‘ta weak and ineffec- tual rayor.”’ “If we are going to get anything done it has got to change,”’ said Gadsby. But she denied that she wanted publicity. “Pm not politically motivated in what I'm doing,"’ she insisted.