The man arrested by B.C.’s gang cops last week in West Kelowna is allegedly the same individual who was shot this week outside a Kelowna gym.
Vancouver Sun journalist Kim Bolan reported the connection and named Kyle Gianis as the victim of the targeted shooting in the parking lot Global Fitness on Monday, March 29.
Kelowna RCMP has not named the shooting victim, but stated he was transported to Kelowna General Hospital, and suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
On Monday, shots rang out just before 12:30 p.m. in the Burch Road area and according to a resident in the neighbourhood, she thought the sound was fireworks.
“I saw three people running…jumping over cars, over cars. And then it was quiet for about 10 minutes.”
Officers arrived on scene to discover a man suffering from gunshot wounds in the parking lot behind Global Fitness.
Witnesses told police they saw a man fleeing the scene in a grey or silver car. Mounties found a matching car burning on Longhill Road shortly after.
Fire crews responded to the area to douse the blaze.
Gianis, the alleged target of the attack, owns Iron Athletics, a West Kelowna clothing company.
Back in April 2020, when B.C. residents were told to stay home and stay safe, Gianis chose not to follow the provincial health officer’s warning and invite a group of individuals to a West Kelowna home to film a reality TV show on Canadian bodybuilders and how they train for the big stage.
At the time, Gianis said he recruited five bodybuilders – three from Saskatchewan and the others from Toronto, Alberta and Kelowna – to fly to the Okanagan and move into a house with other bodybuilders to film a reality TV show.
As days went on, government health guidelines tightened due to COVID-19, but rather than rescheduling the show, Gianis went ahead anyway.
In a YouTube video released last year by Gianis, he says he grew up in Surrey and was introduced into a crime lifestyle at about 15 years old.
He says he was arrested in 2007 in Cancun, Mexico, for drug smuggling and transferred back to the U.S., where he was sentenced to 13 years in jail. Gianis was later transferred to a Canadian prison, where he was granted parole in 2015.
Bolan reported he was associated with members of the United Nations and Dhak-Duhre gangs in jail.
However, the purpose of his YouTube video, according to Gianis, is to show how he turned his life around, surviving two gangland shootings before Monday’s attack and a battle with cancer.
The most recent shooting in Kelowna is just one of four recent violent incidents investigated by RCMP in the Central Okanagan.
On March 21, a man was shot dead in West Kelowna near a strip mall on Highway 97. That same day, a woman was seriously injured in a shooting at an apartment complex in Kelowna.
One week later, eight people were injured in a mass stabbing in a rural area near Kelowna early in the morning on March 28.
READ MORE: Driver who allegedly led Kelowna Mounties on chaotic pursuit arrested
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