MAN SHOT IN RENFREW DRUG RAID

SIU Investigates OPP Actions

A 28-year-old man was in hospital last night after sustaining a gunshot
wound in a Renfrew drug raid gone wrong.

Ontario Provincial Police fired on Louis Gia Forte yesterday morning as a
police tactical unit executed a search warrant at 90 Opeongo Rd., a garage
converted into an apartment.

Members of the Renfrew OPP detachment and officers from the drug
enforcement unit were also involved in the search.

Mr. Gia Forte, also known as Louis Laroque, was transported first to
Renfrew Victoria hospital and then airlifted to the Ottawa Hospital's Civic
campus, where he was listed in good condition last night.

The province's Special Investigations Unit (SIU), an independent civilian
agency, was called in to investigate the incident, as it does in every case
in which a civilian is injured during a police action.

It is unknown if Mr. Gia Forte's girlfriend, Lisa Lavallee, or her
nine-year-old daughter, Courtney, were in the apartment at the time.

Late yesterday, SIU spokeswoman Kaia Werbus would not say why an officer
shot at Mr. Gia Forte.

She also declined to release any details about the drug raid or the
investigation.

The SIU is expected to make its first statement about the incident Monday.

The raid began shortly after 9 a.m. yesterday. Bryan Burns, who lives four
houses away, saw police officers dressed in black get out of their
vehicles. Then he heard a very loud noise.

"If it was from a gun, it was a cannon," he said.

The blast was from the tactical team, setting off a charge to distract the
occupants of the house while other officers entered from the rear.

Two houses away, Dan Vaillancourt heard the explosion. He was startled and
saw a "big puff of smoke coming from the roof."

Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Vaillancourt's house was still within the OPP
security perimeter. In a telephone interview, he said he heard a police
officer with a bullhorn yelling they were executing a search.

"And six to eight rushed the back door, dressed like the army in their
fatigues," he said.

Both neighbours knew Mr. Gia Forte as Louis Larocque, the name he took
after his mother remarried. They did not hear a gunshot, only the loud
disturbance.

Mr. Gia Forte lives in a double garage which was converted into an apartment.

His car, an older, copper-coloured Mustang with tinted windows, was in the
driveway, the hood popped up. The car has a Quebec licence plate. Until two
years ago, he lived in Shawville.

Mr. Vaillancourt knows the layout of the apartment, which he has visited
before the shooting victim moved in a year ago.

"A staircase goes down, you turn right, there's a galley kitchen, maybe
three feet by 12. It would have been massive confusion if the six to eight
guys decided to get in there," he said.

"I don't know what happened, but the police officers must have been
confined, tripping over each other."

"I thought he was normal. He seemed like a nice guy. He seemed nice enough
to talk over the fence," said Mr. Vaillancourt about his neighbour.

They spoke at length last Monday while waiting to testify in a car accident
case, at the Renfrew courthouse, he said.

Meanwhile, news of the raid and the injury has shattered the calm in
Renfrew, a small Ottawa Valley town about 85 kilometres northwest of
Ottawa. While raids on marijuana grow operations are not uncommon,
yesterday's raid surprised some residents.

"What we have here is a bit unusual," said John Carter, a reporter with the
Renfrew Mercury.