He opened his door, got shot in the heart

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This article was published 25/10/2010 (5129 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT was a knock on the door that would lead to a fatal shot in the heart.

As Ian MacDonald shuffled toward the side door of his Boyd Avenue home Saturday night, he had no idea a gunman was about to pump two shots into him.

A friend who heard the deadly encounter said the former Free Press employee tried to push the door closed — but failed.

“He was trying to hold the door… I guess the guy was trying to get in,” said Charlie Thorgrimson, MacDonald’s best friend and roommate.

“The guy shot him right through the window, shot him in the heart.”

Thorgrimson was grieving at the Boyd Avenue home on Monday, among friends who said the brutal shooting of MacDonald, 52, has left them feeling unsettled. MacDonald was a former Cape Bretoner who’d lived in Manitoba for years, they said.

Thorgrimson said the shooter fired two bullets, and the window of the side door was shattered.

He had no idea why a gunman would shoot up the Boyd Avenue home.

“I haven’t got a clue,” he said.

He said he heard a dragging noise that sounded like the man grabbed a bike, immediately after the shooting.

“I think he died a hero. He stopped a massacre from happening,” said Curtis Mainville, another friend of MacDonald’s, who called the death a “big loss.”

“I hope they catch the guy soon.”

Barry MacDonald, Ian’s 41-year-old brother, said Ian had been married but was separated for a couple of years.

He said his “outgoing” brother had no children. He frequently called his family in Sydney, N.S., to catch up.

He said police and the provincial medical examiner’s office told his family the assailant was “some guy that was on a rampage.”

“It was just a random shooting that took place. He was in the wrong spot at the wrong time, same as the little girl and the other fellow,” he said.

MacDonald worked part time at the Free Press in the mailroom from 2006 until early this year.

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca