Saskatoon police investigating suspicious death on 200 block of Avenue I S.

Saskatoon police are investigating a suspicious death on the 200 block of Avenue I South.

Few details are known, beyond that officers were called to a bungalow on the block early Friday morning and removed a body on a gurney.

"At this time, the deceased has not been identified and several people have been taken into custody to be interviewed," police said in anews release.

• Saskatoon police weigh in on crime stats amid violent year

Police are notreleasing the gender of the personor how they died.

Saskatoon's police chief saidhe knows how the image of police taking a body out of a house under unclear circumstances can be distressing.

"Anytime a circumstance like this occurs it's a blow to the community. It challenges individuals sense of safety," Cameron McBride said in an interview.

It's not first time this year this happened on this block.

In February, Jason Horse was identified as the city's thirdhomicide victim. The 48-year-old was killed during a home invasionand three men are now charged with first-degree murder.

The suspicious death Friday comes less than 24 hours after police presented their latest crime statistics to the local Board of Police Commissioners. The police numbers show that violent crime in the city is 10 per cent higher for the first six months than for the same periodin 2023.

Homicides almost doubled in the first six months, to 10. Robberies are up by 27 per cent, and so are abductionsby 14 per cent.

McBride said it could be worse. There were four homicides in a nine-day span in February, but none since June 12.

"In all my years of experience, there's just no way to predict these things," he said.

"We can take all kinds of measures to reduce violent crime, to support people in the community, but at the end of the day often the difference between an aggravated assault and a homicide is millimetres, or seconds. And so we just never know what is going to happen."