The mayor of Vancouver is vowing to crack down on his city's "Occupy" protest after a woman died of a suspected drug overdose on Saturday, just days after another man barely survived a heroin O.D. at the tent city, officials said.
Emergency crews were called to the urban campsite near the Vancouver Art Gallery at 4:30 p.m. after a woman in her 20's identified only as "Ashley" was found unconscious in a tent near where the punk band DOA was playing for protesters, the Toronto Sun reported.
She was pronounced dead later at a nearby hospital. Her full name and age were not released.
Police kept mum about the cause of death, but a source told the Vancouver Sun that the situation resembled an incident on Thursday when an American man was rushed to a hospital after overdosing on heroin at the site.
At a press conference at the site on Saturday night, mayor Gregor Robertson said the encampment had become too dangerous to remain open.
"This is second critical incident in two days - obviously there is a serious problem here," Robertson said, according to the Toronto newspaper.
"Having people die … is not OK."
Robertson said he had ordered city officials to "to end the encampment" but did not give the protesters a deadline to be out.
As the mayor spoke to reporters, angry occupiers shouted in defiance.
"Do you close down every hotel you find a corpse in?" yelled one protestor.
The unrest in Vancouver came on the same day that 20 Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York were arrested during a march on the Manhattan Supreme Court building.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg took a tougher stance on the Zuccotti Park occupiers this week, condemning them for refusing to turn criminal suspects over the police and warning that the city would "take actions" if the protests spun out of control, as they have in Oakland recently.
Vancouver protesters insisted that their site was drug and alcohol free, and vowed to stand their ground.
"We will not agree to be shut down. We will be here and you can expect us," a woman who called herself Kiki said, according to the Toronto Sun.
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