Two gangland killers who mistakenly shot the wrong person in 2009 have lost their appeal of their first-degree murder convictions.
Kevin Jones and Colin Stewart were convicted by a jury two years ago of the Sept. 29, 2009 slaying of Rajinder Soomel in Vancouver.
Right before Soomel was gunned down in the middle of Cambie Street, the killers had barged into the nearby Dick Bell-Irving halfway house and demanded information about another inmate, Independent Soldiers founder Randy Naicker.
A worker at the house erroneously said Naicker had gone out to a store, when it was Soomel who had in fact left the house that night.
The jurors heard that horrified bystanders watched two men chase Soomel across Cambie Street and fire 10 shots, eight of them hitting Soomel in the back and face.
The Crown’s case was based on circumstantial evidence, including DNA of the accused found on items discarded by the shooters in a panicked getaway and the cellphone records of the accused.
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Randy Naicker was gunned down on a busy Port Moody street in June 2012.
On appeal, Jones challenged the admissibility of a statement he made to police months after the shooting, as well as the judge’s instructions to the jury, while Stewart claimed his Charter rights were violated by the admissibility of the DNA and other evidence.
Appeal Court Justice Peter Lowry disagreed.
In the case of Jones’ statement to a Vancouver detective, Lowry said it was “admissible, substantially for the reasons give by the trial judge.”
And he also concluded that “the judge did not err in terms of the admission of evidence in the case against Jones or in the instructions she gave to the jury.”
“Rather, she properly admitted the statement given to the detective and the evidence of the police test drives, and she properly discharged her duty to instruct the jury on their task,” he said.
Lowry also rejected Stewart’s claim that he had been subjected to “a systemic and deliberate pattern of Charter breaches” which the judge did not appropriately consider.
“There can, however, be little merit in this contention when having regard for all of what the judge said, as discussed, and the considerable deference her ruling is to be afforded,” Lowry said.
Appeal Court Justices David Tysoe and John Savage concurred.
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Police on the scene of Randy Naicker’s murder in Port Moody in 2012.
Lowry noted in Wednesday’s ruling that Jones’ DNA was found on a black hoodie and a green bandana discarded on the escape route the killers took. Stewart’s was found on two gloves and a grey hoodie that were also found near the crime scene.
Both men escaped in a getaway car owned by Jesse Adkins, a United Nations gang member.
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Rajinder Singh Soomel.
“It was the same car the staff at the halfway house had observed to be occupied by three men driving by very slowly three times within an hour and then later parked watching the house on the 25th, the day after Naicker moved in,” Lowry noted.
“As was accepted at the trial, Adkins was, at the time, living in the basement of Stewart’s house outside of Vancouver. He disappeared within a few days of the shooting.”
A witness at the murder trial of alleged UN hitman Cory Vallee testified last year that gangster Gurmit Dhak hired the UN to kill Naicker and two others. Naicker was later shot to death in Port Moody in 2012.
The witness also said that Adkins was involved in the Soomel murder, as well as the February 2009 murder of Red Scorpion Kevin LeClair. And the man testified that the UN had arranged to have Adkins killed by a cartel contact in Mexico because they feared he would cooperate with police.
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Read the full ruling here