VALLEY MAN SHOT DURING DRUG RAID

THE province's Special Investigation Unit has been called in after a
28-year-old man was shot in the abdomen by an OPP officer during a morning
drug raid in Renfrew yesterday.

At about 9 a.m., OPP tactical and drug officers arrived at 90 Opeongo Rd.
to exercise a search warrant.

Neighbour Dan Vaillancourt said the officers could be seen descending upon
the residence.

He said he had just come outside when he heard a loud explosion, which he
at first thought was a furnace blowing up.

Then he saw about seven police officers at his neighbour's back door.

"It looked like the army guys all rushing in the back door," he said.

At the same time, a voice from a loudspeaker shouted: "Search warrant being
executed, search warrant being executed."

Vaillancourt said he heard no gunshots after police rushed into the home.

STABLE CONDITION

But soon afterward, the victim was rushed out and loaded into an ambulance.

A SIU spokeswoman said the man was in stable condition after being
transferred by air ambulance from Renfrew to the Ottawa Hospital Civic
campus yesterday.

Vaillancourt said a man lived in the home with a woman and a small girl.
They have lived there for about one year.

Before the raid, Vaillancourt saw the man walk the young girl from the
house to a school bus at about 8:30 a.m.

The raid was one of several that took place in the area yesterday, but OPP
said the incidents were not related.

As part of Project Centrum, OPP drug enforcement unit officers searched a
home on McMahon Rd. in the township of Admaston/Bromley. They also searched
a hydroponics business on Mark Rd. in Renfrew. Officers dismantled a
marijuana grow operation and seized about 882 grams of marijuana.

OPP refused to say whether any drugs or a weapon was found at the Opeongo
Rd. scene.