Plywood covers the basement window of a Marconi Boulevard home that police say was targeted over the long weekend by a shooter who’s still on the loose.

But a 36-year-old man who lives in the house says he has no idea why someone fired a shotgun at his basement window, where he and a group of friends had been partying just minutes earlier.

Jeff Hall and three friends were hanging out in the basement of the single-storey home that he shares with his mother and younger brother Saturday night and into Sunday morning. The men decided to walk to a nearby 24-hour grocery store shortly before 4 a.m., Hall said.

They had walked across the street to the parking lot of an apartment building when a car pulled up a few houses down from Hall’s place. Three or four men got out of the vehicle and one fired a shotgun at the front of the house, Hall said.

“It was one shot, it was loud,” he said.



Jeff Hall does not know why someone would target his home with a shot gun blast on Sunday morning at 206 Marconi Blvd. in London. (DEREK RUTTAN, The London Free Press)

Residents living at the Talisman Woods Housing Co-op, a cluster of three-storey walk-ups across the road from where Hall lives, said they heard what sounded like an argument before a loud noise rang out. Police received multiple calls about two or three possible gunshots fired on Marconi Boulevard Sunday around 3:47 a.m. There were reports of a group gathered in the area prior to the suspected gunshots, but when officers arrived on the scene there wasn’t anybody around, police said.

“No weapon has been recovered at this time,” said Const. Michelle Kasper, a spokesperson for London police.

Nobody was injured, but police confirmed a basement window had been struck at least once.

The blast shattered the window and ripped though a sheet being used as a makeshift curtain.



Gunfire struck this Marconi Boulevard home on Sunday. (DEREK RUTTAN, The London Free Press)

Metal pellets were embedded into a beam in the unfinished basement. More pellets were mixed in with the shards of glass and other debris littering the ground. A table covered with empty alcohol containers and cigarette butts was just metres from the window.

The gunplay left Hall’s mother visibly rattled, though her son appeared more nonchalant about the close encounter.

“It was a little intimidating,” said Hall, adding he doesn’t think his family’s house was singled out.

But police don’t agree.

“We do not believe it to be a random act,” Kasper said.

Witnesses provided investigators with descriptions of two suspects seen fleeing in a dark-­coloured vehicle.

One is described as a man in his 20s with short hair and a goatee. He was wearing a dark baseball hat, black and red sweater and dark blue jeans.

The other man was wearing a baseball hat, black and red sweater with a logo on the front, black track pants and white shoes.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call London police at 519-661-5670 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

dcarruthers@postmedia.com

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