One broker at the
IBAO Conference in Ottawa has a message for friends and loved ones back home: we are safe.
“Things are still very unknown here in Ottawa... but it is a very bad situation,” Cory Young, the COO of Rhodes and Williams Insurance, told Insurance Business. “All members of the convention at this point have been confirmed as safe.”
Those at the Ottawa Convention Centre and adjacent Westin Ottawa Hotel remain in lockdown.
The IBAO has just tweeted that the Convention Centre is closed for the evening, and the exhibit hall will be closed for the night.
It has now been confirmed that there were three separate shooting events in the Parliament Hill area, including the National War Memorial, where a reservist soldier that was standing guard from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada has been declared dead.
The CBC is reporting that there are five people in hospital, with four in stable condition.
Police have been seen knocking down doors, going house to house in an effort to find the gunmen that remain at large.
It is confirmed that Kevin Vickers, the sergeant-at-arms for the House of Commons, shot one assailant dead.
RCMP are urging people in Ottawa not to head downtown, and for those in tall buildings around the downtown core to avoid windows and stay inside.
Parliament Hill staff were issued a security warning to stay away from doors and windows, lock their doors and, if doors would not lock, to barricade them
