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Abbotsford had nine homicides in 2017, said Sgt. Judy Bird, with the most recent coming Thursday, when a man was found shot to death. The victim was identified the following day as 24-year-old Surrey resident Alexander Blanarou.

New Westminster Police investigated a single murder — a Halloween-night stabbing death — and no attempted murders, said spokeswoman Hailey Finnigan.

Richmond recorded eight homicides this year, said Richmond RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dennis Hwang, and Cristianne Leykauf of the Delta Police Department said the city had no homicides in 2017 and no reports of attempted murders.

Vancouver’s homicide investigators were tasked with two double-murders this year, including a July incident in a West End apartment building that saw a 73-year-old man charged with second-degree murder for the deaths of a 57-year-old woman and 51-year-old man. Another double homicide followed in September, when a 25-year-old man was charged with second-degree murder after a couple in their 60s were found dead inside their Marpole home.

There were four homicides in the Downtown Eastside, including the first of 2017, when a man was shot and killed at the Savoy Hotel on Jan. 27. There was a stabbing death in the 100-block East Hastings on March 14, a lethal assault in the 200-block Easting Hastings on June 27, and another murder in which a body was discovered in an apartment on Princess Avenue near Alexander Street in August.

Provincewide homicide data, which are gathered by Statistics Canada, are not yet available for 2017 and will be released in 2018, an RCMP spokeswoman said.

In 2016, Statistics Canada tallied 87 homicides in B.C., down from 97 in 2015 and 89 in 2014.

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