‘A heart of gold’: Victims of Penticton, B.C. shooting spree remembered

[The Librarian]

We’re learning more about the victims of a tragic shooting spree that left four people dead in Penticton on Monday.

John Brittain, 68, has been charged with four counts of murder in the attack, which spanned about an hour and took place at three locations.

Rudi Winter, the first victim, was allegedly shot in the back while pruning a friend’s tree in downtown Penticton, according to his nephew Jeff Schwarz.

“He was a hell of a guy. He had a heart of gold, he couldn’t hurt a fly,” said Schwarz of the 71-year-old grandfather and father of two, who he said had “raised him like a father.”

“There couldn’t have been a kinder soul out there, it’s tragic… He had just a heart like you wouldn’t believe.”

Schwarz said Rudi had emigrated to Canada from Germany in his youth and that he and his wife Renate sold their business in Vancouver and moved to Penticton in the 1980s to operate a motel.

Rudi had since retired and focused his time on helping people out as a handyman, being active in his Jehovah’s Witness congregation and maintaining his garden and grape vines.

“He had a fish pond in the back and that was his passion, feeding them, covering them up, protecting them from raccoons,” he said.

“He had the back yard looking like a European village.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/5174148/penticton-shooting-victims-remembered/?fbclid=IwAR1XoJbTuLfcN2RYCsQ44rBBGuxg5UUCYvckwwGuRPUezAGR76Ab7WVYtlo

[Evacuated]

Critical times, hard to deal with...................