Article content

It started when a man, his head bloodied, wandered into a Tim Hortons restaurant on Montreal Road in Vanier on Tuesday morning.

It ended 4 1/2 hours later, after Ottawa’s heavily armed police tactical unit, complete with seven-tonne BearCat armoured personnel carrier, closed an entire residential block for three hours, stormed a house, and left empty-handed.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Police reopen Vanier block hours after bloodied man walks into coffee shop Back to video

Tiffany Mulhallwas walking her five-year-old daughter to school Tuesday morning when she said she saw half a dozen men, three of whom were bloodied, one of them bandaged.

She asked if they needed help. They said they were OK.

“I saw the amount of blood and I called anyway,” Mulhall said.

Three men fled north along Desrosiers. The other men were chasing another across the Vanier Parkway toward the Tim Hortons.

A police spokesman said officers were called to the coffee shop at about 9 a.m. about a possible stabbing.

Tim Hortons employee Desirée Deschênes had just finished her break and returned to her shift to find a police car in the parking lot, with a man in the back seat.

“It all happened so fast,” Deschênes said.

Police said the man had not been stabbed but that evidence led them to a nearby house at 223 Desrosiers St.

The house was cordoned off and the tactical team summoned as police vehicles sealed off the block and prevented access from the nearby Vanier Parkway.

An OC Transpobus was called to the intersection of Desrosiers and Deschamps Avenue for evacuees.

Morgan Dow and Susan Brown, who moved into the house next door in June, said they had not previously heard of any violent incidents in the area. “You don’t normally find any trouble around here unless you’re looking for it,” Dow said.

Dow said police told him and his partner to stay away from their home because there were suspicions an armed man had barricaded himself in the house next door.

After trying to communicate with anyone who might be inside the house, tactical officers ultimately stormed the residence but did not find a suspect.

Police declared the operation over shortly before 1:30 p.m., saying there had been no arrests.