MOUNT PEARL, Newfoundland and Labrador — Whatever thoughts of Christmas were in Edwin Murrin’s mind Christmas Eve night, it’s unlikely he foresaw he’d be trying to wrest a shotgun from his neighbor’s hands on Christmas Day. By early afternoon Christmas Day, though, Murrin’s neighbour William Riggs would be arrested by police and Murrin would have quite a story to tell.
Around noon on Dec. 25, The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary swarmed Jubilee Place off Park Avenue in Mount Pearl, where a reported shooting had taken place.
Arriving at the home, police found an injured person. However, it wasn’t due to a gunshot wound.
One neighbor who chose to remain anonymous said he looked out his window at one point on Christmas Day and saw several RNC officers walking down the street toward 15 Jubilee Place with their guns drawn.
Murrin lives in No. 14, next door to where the incident took place. Murrin heard a gunshot and saw a woman run out of her house in distress, followed by Riggs, who was carrying a shotgun.
“Then he pointed the gun at me,” Murrin told The Telegram later Christmas Day.
Murrin exchanged heated words with the gun carrier.
“Then I ran across the street, grabbed ahold of him and slammed him to the ground,” Murrin said.
Now holding the gun, Murrin put it by his own car in his driveway and asked the woman what was going on.
“She said he just shot his father in the head.”
But nobody actually was shot.
Murrin told The Telegram the man with the gun hit his father over the head with it. The shotgun did go off, according to Murrin. Whether this was intentional or not isn’t certain, but Murrin said the man tried to shoot his father after hitting him over the head with the weapon but missed.
The RNC confirmed that a man was treated for minor injuries.
In court on Boxing Day, Riggs was charged with assault, assault with a weapon, breach of a court order and uttering threats, among other offenses, for a total of 13 charges. He is being held until a bail hearing on Dec. 29.
Murrin knows his neighbor Riggs well enough.
“Buddy is the best kind of a fella. I talk to him every day.”
Murrin said that Riggs is going through a hard time and the behavior he saw on Christmas Day was out of character.
As for his having disarmed a man with a shotgun, Murrin didn’t seem too bent out of shape over it.
“It was a little tangly of a morning,” he said. “It’s not the normal kind of thing you do on Christmas Day.”
Read more from The Telegram at www.thetelegram.com.