Rose Valley Dam wildfire
It was a quiet wildfire season in the Okanagan, except for one notable blaze in the South Okanagan that destroyed a home.
The Christie Mountain wildfire sparked near Penticton on Aug. 18 and grew to 2,122.5 hectares before it was considered held on Aug. 25.
Hundreds of residents were evacuated and Penticton’s Upper Carmi area was placed on an evacuation alert due to the blaze.
In the Central Okanagan, wildfire crews battled a much smaller blaze that sparked on Aug. 2 in the hills above Westside Road.
The fire near the Rose Valley Dam burned for four days and grew to three hectares.
During the same week, a wildfire 27 kilometres west of Merritt and adjacent to Highway 5 caused issues for drivers on the Coquihalla due to smoke in the area.
The Coldwater River wildfire was just one of 19 wildfires burning in the Kamloops Fire Centre on Aug. 3, 13 of which were sparked on Aug. 1 and 2. Half of the 19 fires were caused by lightning, one was caused by persons and the cause of the other nine remained unknown.
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No one shot after bullets fly at the Kelowna Ramada
Image: Twila Amato, Black Press Media
Two men were targeted in a shooting at Kelowna’s Ramada Hotel on Aug. 26, however, no one was injured after bullets were fired into the courtyard.
At the time RCMP claimed someone had been shot, but Kelowna city councillor Maxine DeHart, who also works at the hotel, witnessed the event and said a man tripped and fell running away from the shots and hurt his elbow.
The suspect fled the area in a black car.
Witnesses to the incident told the Capital News in August that a group of men who appeared to be the targets of the shooting had their vehicle impounded by the RCMP and were stuck without anywhere to go and tried unsuccessfully to check back into the hotel.
An abandoned vehicle, suspected to be involved in this incident, was located by RCMP just after 1 p.m. on Skeena Drive on Dilworth Mountain. Officer searched the area extensively but did not locate a suspect.
The suspect is still at large.
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East Kelowna shooting death deemed homicide
Kelowna RCMP is confirming that there is no evidence to suggest Sunday’s shooting incident that left one man dead and another man injured is connected to the Aug. 26 targeted shooting at the Ramada.
In a reported unrelated event to the Ramada shooting, a man drove to the Kelowna General Hospital after suffering minor injuries from a gunshot wound just five days after bullets rang out at the hotel.
The man who drove to the hospital had another man inside his vehicle who was dead from a gunshot wound.
The shooting occurred in the McCulloch area.
The deceased has now been identified as 34-year-old Cory Allan Patterson, of Kelowna. The Kelowna RCMP Serious Crime Unit has now taken conduct of the investigation and is releasing Patterson’s identity in hopes it will result in new leads.
At the time, Cpl. Jocelyn Noseworthy confirmed that neither of the shootings that took place over the last week was connected to the unsolved March 25 fatal shooting on Trumpeter Court.
Back in March, gunshots rang out about midnight in the Upper Mission area, and when police arrived on scene they discovered a man dead inside a vehicle near a home at the end of the court.
The gunmen from all three incidents remain at large.
