Barry Artiste Op/Ed
As I posted the original story yesterday, it has come to light, but no surprise the fatal shooting of a shopper at Vancouver’s Oakridge Shopping Mall was a gang associate of the Independent Soldiers Gang. Certainly not the Glamourous Life the deceased envisioned when he took up a life of crime.
Yesterdays story on Now Public on the shooting as it happened below
http://my.nowpublic.com/world/vancouver-bc-2-men-sought-fatal-shooting-vancouver-mall-man-his-20s-dies-multiple-gunshot-wounds
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=bc614e70-0c5b-4f7b-b4cb-0a4278d50b60
Police link slain gangster to criminal killed five weeks ago
Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, October 04, 2008
VANCOUVER – A gangster slain at Oakridge Mall on Thursday was a close associate of James Edward O’Toole, another criminal shot to death on Commercial Drive five weeks ago.
Vancouver Police Insp. Mike Porteous said Rakesh Ratnam Naidu was well known to police as being linked to both O’Toole and Sammy Chan, whose gangster brother Tommy was shot in the head at the Richard’s on Richards nightclub in May 2006.
Porteous said it was too early to pinpoint the motive in the brazen mid-afternoon shooting in a busy mall parking lot.
“There is clearly some ongoing gang conflict,” Porteous said. “A couple of recent gang murders are guys that hung together, so something is going on.”
The Vancouver Sun was told by several sources that Naidu, 34, associated with the Independent Soldiers (IS), a major drug-trafficking gang in Metro Vancouver.
But Porteous said that while Naidu may know IS members, his own crew was headed by O’Toole and Chan.
“If he ran into the IS in a bar, he might have a drink with them and he knows them. But he is not a member of the IS,” Porteous said. “He is associated to two recent murder victims – one being James O’Toole … and the other being Tommy Chan. Those two were both part of the group he ran with.”
The message should be loud and clear to anyone involved in gangs or attracted to the action, Porteous said.
“These guys either end up dead or going to jail for a long time, even though they think they are living a glamourous lifestyle,” he said.
Naidu was near his car at the mall’s lowest parkade level just after 2 p.m. Thursday when his two killers fired between 10 and 20 shots at him.
Tags: Canada | Vancouver | police | gang | death | World | Hits | Shopping Mall | asian gangs | status quo
