Police are joining forces across the Lower Mainland amid a handful of shootings in the region in recent weeks.
The latest shootings include two incidents that have not been confirmed as related to gang-on-gang crime, including a fatal shooting outside of a Walmart in Delta on Saturday which killed Bikramdeep Randhawa, 29,, a corrections officer who worked at a Maple Ridge prison.
Shots were fired outside Willowbrook Shopping Centre in Langley on Monday, leaving one man in potentially life-threatening injuries in what police so far believe to be unrelated incident. A vehicle was later found on fire at a berry farm in Aldergrove.
In an update Tuesday (May 4), Delta police Chief Neil Dubord said he acknowledges the anxiety many people are feeling, and said police departments are working together.
Over the weekend, a woman in Burnaby was also injured in an apparent targeted attack. A 19-year-old man showed up at a hospital in Surrey with injuries from a shooting, where he later died.
Last week, police from across Metro Vancouver offered an update on the escalating gun violence, following the killings of three men known to police: Harpreet Singh Dhaliwal, who was shot outside a restaurant in Coal Harbour, Bailey McKinney, who was shot at a basketball court in Coquitlam, and MMA fighter Todd Gouwenberg, who was shot outside a recreation centre in Langley.
Assistant Comm. Manny Mann, chief officer of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, said on April 22 that 15 gang-related killings had occurred across Metro Vancouver in 2021.
He says the situation has flared again, as tensions dating back to 2008 and 2009 between the United Nations gang and rivals including the Red Scorpions, Independent Soldiers and the Wolf Pack are aggravated by the emergence of new players.
“Contributing factors to this include the connection to past conflicts and incidents, new and quickly changing alliances, family connections, competition over drug lines, backstabbing and debt collection,” said Mann.
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