Abbotsford police are exploring the possibility a murder victim found early Wednesday morning may not have been the person meant to die in the city's third homicide of the year.

The shooting took place along a stretch of rural blacktop near the corner of Polar Avenue and Townline Road, in northwest Abbotsford.

"When you have two people at a location, and one is alive and one is dead, you have to go in with a thought at least, that maybe, one person caught it and shouldn't have, and the other person was more the intended target," APD Const. Ian MacDonald said.

RCMP Integrated Homicide Investigation Team detectives and APD patrol officers were observed scouring the scene Wednesday morning after descending upon the area at 3 a.m. following a 911 report of shots fired, MacDonald said.

Officers arriving on scene found the victim shot to death, lying on the road near a mid-90s Chevy Tahoe, shell casings scattered on the ground. The other person was located a short distance away.

"Likely because of the gunfire," MacDonald said.

He described the individual found alive at the scene as "very well known to police" throughout several jurisdictions in the Lower Mainland, having more than 50 interactions with law enforcement for violence, weapons possession, and property theft dating back to 2005.

Investigators are trying to piece together why the individuals were on a dark, isolated road in the middle night, but MacDonald said it was too early in the investigation to link the murder to gangs or drugs.

He said police are also hesitant to call the homicide a targeted hit, because "some people would interpret that as meaning the deceased was the target."

Eyewitness accounts put a car leaving the murder scene at a high rate of speed following the report of gunshots, MacDonald said.

"It's been described as a silver passenger car [four-door sedan]," he said.

Abbotsford police continue to assist IHIT with the case, and APD major crime detectives would be transitioning the file to IHIT by Thursday.

MacDonald said he couldn't help but draw a comparison of Wednesday's shooting to the murder of Red Scorpion associate Jaswant "Billy" Rai in 2009.

Rai, 36, was found shot to death in the early morning hours of June 30, just a few kilometres from Townline Road on rural Spallin Avenue.

There too, police were called to the scene after receiving several 911 reports of shots fired, and discovered Rai in a pool of blood next his car, dead from gunshot wounds to the head. No arrests have been made in the Rai shooting, and the case is still open.

RArnott@abbotsfordtimes.com