City Motor Hotel Shooting

Two men have been arrested after a gunshot was fired inside a room at an east-end hotel Saturday afternoon.
Police are investigating an altercation involving a firearm inside a unit at the City Motor Hotel that led to “numerous” people fleeing from the area, Staff Sergeant John Ross.

“We have two people under arrest with maybe more to follow,” he said, adding detectives were interviewing witnesses. Charges have not been laid yet, Ross said.
The weapon was recovered by police near the scene. The Queenston traffic circle and part of the hotel’s parking lot was closed for a couple hours as police and the forensic unit investigated.

A bullet hole was visible in one of the hotel room’s windows.
Hamilton paramedics were called to assess three people and transported two of them with minor injures to the hospital. Another person was assessed and released to police.
None of them had been shot, EMS platoon manager Steve Pancino said.
Hotel co-owner Mark Snopek said he was sitting outside with the hotel manager on a lunch break when he saw a tan-coloured pick-up truck pull into the parking lot.
Five men jumped out, went over to Unit 23 and starting kicking “really hard” on the door, he said

One of the men had a gun and fired a couple shots at the door, Snopek said.
At that point, the owner ran through a side door into the kitchen and called the police. When officers arrived, Snopek opened the Main Street East gate for them.
There, he saw police catch the man who had been living in Unit 23 after he tried to run away, Snopek said, adding the man’s fiancée, who was staying in the same room, had run up to him earlier and said: “Don’t call the police, please!”
The men from the truck tried to escape the other way around the building, toward Queenston, Snopek said

Another witness, who did not want her name published, said she saw a group of men get out of the vehicle and go to one of the ground-floor units. “I heard some hollering … And then I heard something that sounded like a car smash,” she said.
The woman, who also lives at the hotel, looked outside and saw one man chasing another and then heard two shots being fired.