A 27-year-old woman is dead after a gunshot Wednesday afternoon at a home on the Old Cariboo Highway. Although the incident appears to be a case of a self-inflicted fatal wound from a rifle, police are not closing the matter.
"The cause of death is being investigated and treated as suspicious," said Prince George RCMP spokeswoman Const. Julie Champagne.
Police confirmed that all such scenes are examined as if it were a homicide, and the evidence leads to any final determinations. A search warrant on the Blackburn-area home was being prepared as of Thursday afternoon, and a forensic autopsy had been ordered.
One other person was in the home at the time of the gunshot - about 4 p.m. The woman's domestic partner. He was taken into custody for questioning.
"There were no children in the home," said the city's commanding officer, Supt. Eric Stubbs. "None of this was gang related."
Other police contacts confirmed that the RCMP had attended at that home for past incidents.
This event follows less than two days after another publicly viewed death apparently by suicide, again by a young woman in the presence of a man believed to be her partner, but involving fatal fire. A 21-year-old woman was the victim in that instance.
The Prince George RCMP's operations officer, Insp. Keith Redl, said people attribute a spate of events - including the dramatic criminal allegations in recent days - to apparently random factors like the full moon or the weather.
He did not dismiss external influences as impossible but in general "this is just one of those bad weeks."
He said it was extremely rare, in his police experience, for women to opt for suicide methods like these ones, should they prove to be deliberately self-inflicted wounds. Statistically, he said, women were more prone to use less visibly violent methods.
