Abbotsford Police Const. Casey Vinet said both victims were men in their 20s, but would not say if they were known to police, given that positive identifications had not yet been made.
Gang contacts have said that both were front-line workers in the drug trade and associates of the notorious Bacon brothers and the Red Scorpion gang.Homicide investigators were looking for possible connections Tuesday between the targeted slayings of two young men less than nine hours apart.The two murders came after a lull in the gang violence that has rocked Metro Vancouver this year, leaving 28 dead and more than a dozen others wounded.Police have said there is an all-out gang war as rivals battle over turf and long-standing disputes.Supt. Dan Malo, who heads the Integrated Gang Task Force, said most of the victims are mid-level drug dealers or those running dial-a-dope lines. Some are killed by rivals, but others are shot by their own crews because of internal disputes or debts.
“That’s where we are seeing all of the violence right now,” Malo said. “It’s a continuation of the spike we’ve been seeing of late and we’ve still got to get around the corner.”
The first victim was found slumped over the steering wheel of a gold-coloured import car at the entrance to Bateman Park about 10:45 p.m. Monday, shot to death in a targeted hit.The second man remained under a yellow police tarp most of Tuesday beside the popular Yellow Barn produce store just off the Trans-Canada Highway on Sumas Prairie near the Abbotsford-Chilliwack boundary.Vinet said the second victim displayed some “injury” but could not say what the cause of death was until an autopsy has been completed.
The body lay in a field just off the parking lot and appeared to have been dumped there, something investigators were considering, Vinet said.He said police were called about 7 a.m. by a motorist who saw the body lying a few metres from the store’s propane tank.
Workers at the barn said they arrived about 7:30 a.m. to find the whole west side of the parking lot behind yellow police tape.Vinet said there were no overnight reports of gunshots in the area of farms and produce stands, sandwiched between mountains.But there was a shots-fired call just before 1 a.m. in the 6000-block of Riverside Street.One shot hit a house. No one was injured in that shooting and police did not believe it was connected to the two deaths, Vinet said.He said he could not remember another time when Abbotsford police were called to two separate murders in such a short time span.“It is unusual. It is concerning,” he said. “There are still a lot of details we don’t know. There’s still a lot of work to be done.”Abbotsford had seen a lull in gang violence in recent weeks following its high-profile campaign to monitor the movements of the two youngest Bacon brothers — Jamie and Jarrod — who are both marked for death by rivals. Both are out on bail on a series of gun and drug charges.Their Red Scorpion gang has been engaged in a bloody turf war with the rival United Nations gang.Abbotsford Mayor George Peary said he had just been chatting with Police Chief Bob Rich about how the shootings seemed to have died down.“And then two homicides in one night,” Peary said Tuesday. “Sadly of course, no community is safe and no community can escape this violence.”He said two murders so close together were unusual for Abbotsford.
“It’s troubling and it’s symptomatic of the violence we have had across the Lower Mainland in recent months,” Peary said.He said he was confident the region’s integrated policing teams have a great deal of intelligence on the gangs and those doing the killing.“But it is really difficult for them to prevent this kind of stuff,” he said. “There are far too many guns available.”
If there is any good news out of the latest tragedy, it is that the slayings were in semi-rural locations and did not endanger the general public, Peary said.“There was less likelihood of an innocent bystander getting caught in the cross-fire.”In Vancouver meanwhile, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass said Tuesday more arrests and major charges are pending against Metro gang members.“You’re going to see more arrests in the coming weeks, significant arrests,” Bass said during a meeting with The Vancouver Sun editorial board to discuss gangs and organized crime.