OPP Officer Gunned Down On Rural Road Near Seaforth

Suspect Also Airlifted To London Hospital

by Cambridge Now
Mar 09, 2010


A Great Loss To Family And Police Family
An Ontario Provincial Police officer died Monday after being involved in a shootout on a  rural road near Seaforth,Ontario.
A 70-year-old man, also wounded by gunfire, is considered the number one suspect, OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino told a news conference.
OPP Const. Vu Pham was responding to a “routine” call around 10:18 a.m. when he took the “initiative” to pull over a white pickup truck on North Line, near Seaforth, about an hour north of London, Ont., Fantino said.
Pham, 37, was attempting “to stop a vehicle and in doing so was confronted by an armed suspect,” Fantino said. The married father of three was airlifted to London Health Sciences Centre where doctors tried to save his life. He died late Monday afternoon.
“I am deeply saddened by the loss of this young brave officer,” Fantino said in a statement.
A 70-year-old man was being treated in LondonVictoriaHospital. Charges are pending, Fantino said.
The commissioner would not confirm dramatic witness accounts that multiple shots were fired as Pham engaged in a gun battle across the desolate two-lane road running alongside still-snow-covered fields.
An eye witness said “The guy (was) laying in the ditch and the police officer was on the other side of the road in the ditch but he was standing up and they were both shooting back and forth at each other,”
Fantino would not confirm news reports suggesting Pham was en route to a “domestic” call when he pulled over the van. Aerial photographs show the black-and-white cruiser stopped behind a white Dodge pickup, both with their doors ajar.
The province’s Special Investigations Unit has been called in. The SIU is a civilian agency that examines incidents involving police and civilians that result in serious injury or death.
It appears Pham was on his own at the time of the “encounter” and the officers who raced to the scene after the fact “were not able to help officer Pham because he was already wounded at that time,” Fantino said.
Pham and his wife Heather were raising their three children, Tyler, 12, Jordan, 10 and Joshua, 7, in Wingham, Ont., a community of about 3,000. Pham, who was born in Vietnam and joined the police force in 1995, had previously served with the OPP in Cochrane and West Parry Sound. He was currently posted to the HuronCounty detachment.
 “Our thoughts are with this police officer and his family and friends and the broader policing family,” Premier Dalton McGuinty said at the provincial legislature.
 


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