Niagara Regional Police officers were positioned on Plymouth Road in Welland, Ont., on Friday, close to the location where an officer was shot.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Canadian Press
A tense standoff in Welland, Ont., that began after an officer was shot Friday during a confrontation at a former church occupied by a religious sect has ended with a man being taken into custody.
In an online update Saturday morning, Niagara Regional Police Services said the man, who had barricaded himself in the former church after the shooting, was taken into custody at approximately 7:30 a.m.
A shelter in place order for residents of the neighbourhood has been lifted and streets have reopened.
Daniel Tronko, 59, was arrested for attempted murder and police said further criminal charges are expected pending investigation.
The arrest followed a night of attempted negotiation with Mr. Tronko. In the news release, police said they sent remote cameras into the residence as part of negotiations, and that Mr. Tronko had fired at and disabled the cameras.
The release did not detail how Mr. Tronko was taken into custody. Police said he was taken to hospital and there were no further injuries to officers or members of the public.
Friday’s shooting put people on high alert in a neighbourhood that includes the city’s main hospital, several schools, nursing homes and dozens of residences and businesses. The Welland County General Hospital and local schools were temporarily put in lockdown as a precaution, police said.
Following the female officer’s shooting, dozens of heavily armed tactical officers from neighbouring police services, including Hamilton and Halton, and multiple armoured vehicles, surrounded the building.
It’s the second time in a week that a police officer has been injured in a shooting in the small, southern Ontario city. A fatal shootout last Saturday left a man who was wanted on an arrest warrant dead.
Friday’s shooting occurred near St. Mary Catholic School just before 8 a.m., as children were headed to their final day of classes before the holiday break.
Police told The Globe and Mail that the shooting occurred after municipal bylaw staff went to a former church on Second Street, accompanied by police, to follow up on complaints about an illegal fence around the property. A man inside the church started shooting at them and officers fired back before he was “contained” within the building, police alleged.
An order for residents to shelter in place was lifted early Saturday morning.Molly Hayes/The Globe and Mail
The property is registered to Mr. Tronko, who says he is an elder in a religious sect called the Church of the Higher Consciousness. The sect says it follows Buddhist teachings. Mr. Tronko purchased the dilapidated building in 2012 and converted it into a private, fenced compound.
The building, a former Hungarian Presbyterian Church, has been the subject of a years-long dispute with city officials over bylaw infractions and a proposed rezoning by the municipality. Neighbours have complained about barbed wire around the property, bonfires and guard dogs, according to local news reports. The words “Independent state of Bhudan” and a giant Z are painted on a wooden fence that was erected earlier this year.
In a 2019 presentation to Welland’s city council, Mr. Tronko proposed building a “meditation garden” on adjacent city-owned lands. He said the city was discriminating against his group because it wanted to rezone the land for commercial purposes instead.
“There have been numerous obstacles to overcome including discrimination from the city itself,” he said in a 2017 letter to council. “We are peaceful people trying to act on our international and national rights to peacefully practice our religion.”
In 2022, Mr. Tronko was fined $18,750 for preventing fire crews from entering the property and for refusing to put out an illegal, open-air bonfire, according to Welland Fire and Emergency Services. He’s publicly stated his land is a “sovereign nation,” and does not recognize the authority of the City of Welland.
A Niagara police spokesperson, Constable Richard Hingley, said the officer injured in Friday’s shooting was shot in the chest but protected by her body armour.
Speaking from nearby Buffalo, N.Y., Ontario Premier Doug Ford told reporters he had heard an officer was shot in Welland and said his “prayers and thoughts” are with her and her family, as well as with police on both sides of the border. “God bless her and pray everything’s going to work out. I’m very, very confident it will,” he said.
The injured officer was not identified. She was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the Niagara Regional Police Service, which oversees policing in the city with a population of around 56,000 people. Police said in a Friday evening update that the officer had been released with minor injuries.
A tactical police vehicle in Welland, Ont. is part of the response to reports of gunfire in the city's downtown area.
On Dec. 13, tactical officers became involved in another shooting in Welland when they went to a residence on Steel Street to arrest a man wanted by Peel Regional Police.
In that shooting, five Niagara Regional Police officers exchanged gunfire with a 26-year-old man who died from his injuries. Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the province’s police watchdog, is now investigating. The SIU automatically investigates whenever police discharge their weapons.
That shooting occurred just a few blocks south of the shooting Friday morning. In that earlier incident, an officer was also injured in the shootout, taken to hospital and later released.
The SIU is investigating Friday’s shooting, police said.