Police have confirmed the man gunned down on the street in Port Moody Monday afternoon was Randynesh Raman Naicker, founder of the notorious Independent Soldiers gang.
A gunman wearing a black mask opened fire on Naicker in front of dozens of onlookers at St. Johns and Queens streets, a busy intersection that’s home to a Starbucks, an Indian restaurant and a number of other businesses, at around 4:45 p.m.
The 34-year-old Burnaby resident died at the scene.
Witnesses told CTV News they heard between eight and 10 shots fired, then saw Naicker fall to the ground before the suspect jumped into a getaway vehicle with another man and sped away from the area. Police located what appeared to be the murder weapon shortly after in an alley half a block away.
Vancouver homicide investigators were called in to handle the case, under an agreement with the Port Moody Police Department, and are still working to piece together suspect and vehicle descriptions.
Naicker had only been out of prison for about a year, after serving five years for kidnapping and forcible confinement. His crime was meant as payback for a bungled drug shipment.
In 2009, armed men came looking for Naicker at a Vancouver halfway house, and fellow inmate Raj Soomel was shot in the street, although Naicker denied that the hit was intended for him. His past was such a concern that the National Parole Board stated his presence in the community could be a threat to innocent people.
Longtime gang investigator Const. Doug Spencer told CTV News that the "new breed" of gangster isn't usually concerned about killing the competition.
"You would like to think that maybe the guy learned something in prison and he was turning it around, but at the very least, his past caught up with him," he said.
The shooting marks Port Moody’s second gang killing in the past month, after Gurbinder Singh Toor was shot to death in the parking lot of the Port Moody Recreation Centre on May 30.
Police say the 35-year-old had connections to the Dhak-Duhre crime group, whose members have been targeted in a number of bloody gang hits in Metro Vancouver over the past year.
Anyone with information on either murder is asked to call the Vancouver Police Department’s Homicide Unit at 604-717-2500 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
