Man grazed by stray bullet during Iqaluit shooting

Shots fired during Wednesday's early-morning shootout in Iqaluit entered a nearby home and one grazed a man's head while he was sleeping.

Arthur Wilson, 24, said he was asleep when bullets started to rip through his bedroom wall at around 4 a.m. ET.

"I felt like I got hit in the head by a baseball bat," he said.

"I was thinking, 'What in the hell's going on?' Then I heard a couple of shots fired after and I realized I'd been struck in the head."

Two bullet holes are visible on the side of his staff house. He doesn't know who fired the shots that entered the home.

Wilson said he yelled for everyone to get down; there were a total of five people in the house.

Wilson said he then crawled to his sister's room, where she was asleep with her baby and her boyfriend. Only then did he realize his head was bleeding.  

They called the police. RCMP arrived before the ambulance did.

"It was a scary feeling because the door was left open for the longest time and the house started to get real, real, real cold," Wilson said.

"TV, books say that you get this cold feeling before you're about to die, and that was probably the scariest time of my night at that particular moment."

When the medics arrived, Wilson learned the bullet had just grazed him.

He was put in the ambulance to go to the hospital along with another wounded person — possibly the person who was involved in the shootout with police.

Wilson was released from hospital on Wednesday with five staples that closed his head wound, and he returned to work on Thursday. He had moved to Iqaluit just two weeks ago from New Brunswick to work at the Arctic Ventures store.

Wilson's home is now a crime scene, so he and his roommates have bunked with co-workers.

John Bens, the general manager at Arctic Ventures, said Wilson is a hard worker and hopes he stays in Iqaluit despite his rough initiation to the city.

"There was a lot of gunfire," Bens said.

"To me, it seems perhaps the situation could have been done differently. I don't know. I wasn't there and I'm certain that they will investigate and look into it and I hope find out what happened."

The Ottawa Police Service, which is overseeing the police investigation, has not released any more details about the incident.