SURREY - Clayton Heights ain't so bad.

Just ask the resident whose next-door neighbour was shot when he answered a knock at his front door earlier this week.

Despite a bullet having hit her house, the woman, who declined to give her name or have her photo taken, insists she feels safe.

"I'm not planning on moving," she said. "We love this neighbourhood, and that hasn't changed."

"I've lived other places and things happened there as well."

The woman moved to the ever-growing Clayton area in February, from an acreage in Langley.

"I'm still happy to be here," she said, despite Tuesday's shooting. She declined to comment on her immediate neighbours but the neighbourhood itself, she said, "is a wonderful place."

Her neighbour was shot in the leg and stomach when he answered his door Tuesday afternoon. The shooting happened in the 19000-block of 68th Avenue.

A man was seen running from the scene then getting away in a jeep, which police later located. They arrested a "person of interest," but at press time were still looking for the shooter and no charges had yet been laid. The victim, meanwhile, remains in hospital, in serious condition.

Police say this is a "targeted" shooting but at press time were unable to say if it was gang related or had anything to do with organized crime.

Certain unease has crept into the new Clayton Heights neighbourhood, considering that this shooting happened on the heels of a domestic-related homicide that happened a few blocks away, on June 3rd.

Marianthi Teresa Tsanos, 25, died of multiple gunshot wounds. She died lying in the middle of 67th Avenue, near 193rd Street. Her boyfriend Aaron Ogrodnick, the suspect in the shooting, took his own life shortly after.

The violence spawned newspaper captions like "Hood under siege."

Asked if we're back in the bad old days of gangster street violence, Cpl. Dale Carr, spokesman for the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, replied "Not at all."

"There's nothing to suggest there's some sort of ongoing retaliatory homicides going on," he said.

Nor is the recent violence connected.

In the "domestic" killing, he noted, "the suspect is dead by his own hand." There was also a fatal stabbing in March during a fight between neighbours, and in that case charges have been laid.

Carr was referring to the arrest of 32-year-old Adrian Skara of Surrey for the murder of Buta Singh Sangha, 21, who was stabbed to death during a brawl in an alley off 192nd Street and 71 Avenue. The victim's family had been celebrating a birth in their family in the backyard of their coach house prior to the stabbing.

A woman named Katy, out walking her dog, was not fazed by the killings. "They seem kind of specific so I'm not overly worried somebody's going to be looking for me."

"I still feel safe. I walk my dog every day, early in the morning and in the evening and feel perfectly safe doing it," she said.

Joel Brenz has lived in Clayton Heights for two years. He's moving out - not because of the crime, but for other reasons.

"It's not really our scene, our type of neighbourhood," he said.

People don't seem to know one another here, he added. Too much anonymity.

"Probably something to do with the fact that it's a brand-new neighbourhood and nobody's taken ownership of it."

Of the violence, he said, "it's not like they're matching incidents. Like one is a domestic thing, and the other is probably a gang thing, right.

"But we have seen stuff going on here that looks like people maybe doing drug deals. We've seen the odd guy standing around, at a certain time of the day every day..."

Nevertheless, he added, "I'm not living in fear."

Krista Lownsbrough, another resident, figures it's a "nice area with families and kind people." She's lived in Clayton Heights for a couple of years.

Resident Bawa Singh Hoonjan called it "a good neighbourhood."

"It's really safe here."

But another resident, who put her house up for sale a month ago, isn't so sure about that. She's lived here for four years. She felt safe before the recent violence, she said, but now she's having second thoughts.

"It's not safe."

BLOCK WATCH PROGRAMS COULD HELP: WATTS:

SURREY - Surrey RCMP and Crime Prevention volunteers will be showing the flag in Clayton Heights to offer reassurance to residents following a series of violent crimes there.

"We've got police and Surrey Crime Prevention going up into Clayton to help people there deal with this," Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said Thursday.

The most effective way residents can protect themselves, Watts said, is by establishing a strong Block Watch program and looking out for their neighbours.

"They should report any suspicious vehicles or people to the police."