Canadian Security Magazine

Former foster child remembers B.C. church shooting victim

By The Canadian Press   

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SALMON ARM, B.C. — A former foster child of a British Columbia man killed at a church on the weekend is remembering the shooting victim as someone who helped him discover his potential.

The man gunned down while attending services at the Salmon Arm Church of Christ on Sunday has been identified as Gord Parmenter who, along with his wife, Peggy, had cared for foster children in the Interior B.C. community.

“Gord and Peggy were more than foster parents. They treated me like their own kin,” the former foster child, who can’t be named, wrote in an email.

“Gordon was driven by his faith and helping people was his way of serving God,” the statement said.

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“I was a very complex case and complexity is what Gord specialized in. He helped me become who I am today, and always with a laugh.”

The former foster son said he wept for an hour after learning Parmenter had been killed.

Salmon Arm RCMP say a second man was seriously injured in the shooting before church parishioners managed to wrestled a 25-year-old suspect to the ground and held him until police arrived.

RCMP said charges were pending against the suspect, who remained in custody.

The foster son said the Parmenters took him and several other foster children in over the years because Gord Parmenter had volunteered to be the emergency placement home in Salmon Arm.

“This meant that he would welcome kids into his home who had nowhere else to go,” said the foster son, who added some of his favourite memories of Parmenter are of spending time tinkering in the retired cabinet-maker’s woodworking shop.

“Woodworking was his third love. God was his first followed by his wife,” said the statement, in which the foster son also remembered Parmenter for his inspirational stories that helped children deal with “heartache, disappointment and general teenage pitfalls.”

“Without him I never would have made it to Grade 12. I was fear-stricken at the thought of attending classes. However, I was able to reintegrate into the school system in Grade 11. I am now in my third term of college. I would not be there were it not for Gord.”

The statement also references a mid-March fire that severely damaged the Salmon-Arm-area trailer home owned by the Parmenters.

RCMP reported at the time that the blaze was “suspicious and likely arson,” but have not linked that fire to the fatal shooting.

News from © Canadian Press Enterprises Inc. 2019


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