Two very different portraits are emerging of the man gunned down at Kal Tire in Chilliwack last week.
Yee Hung Chin, 33, was killed when a black van drove up to the Progress Way business and a man jumped out, shooting him at 8:56 a.m. July 21, the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team says.
Calgary police knew him as Roland Chin, a high-ranking member of the FOB gang who’d been in and out of prison for years on drug and gun convictions, and whose brother was shot dead nine years ago.
But churchgoers in Mission and Chilliwack knew him as Jason Chin, and said he’d been working hard to turn his life around, joining their congregation after a chance meeting with a pastor New Year’s Day.
The FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) gang rose up in the 1990s in the Calgary area, ultimately leading to some of the Calgary police’s biggest investigations. Their rivalry with the FK (Fresh off the boat Killers) gang resulted in at least 25 homicides – killings that included gang members but also innocent Calgarians.
Affiliates from both groups served time for drug and weapons charges, criminal organization and murder convictions. Roland Chin was one of them, rearrested in 2008 in a Cadillac Escalade flagged as stolen with a loaded handgun hidden inside.
He had recently served a 32-month sentence after he’d been arrested with his brother, Roger Chin, and convicted for possession of narcotics and a loaded gun. Roger was killed in a drive by shooting in July 2008, a killing observers had feared could trigger an all-out gang war.
The FOBs are now essentially gone, with many alleged members either dead or behind bars.
IHIT said the victim of Friday's shooting had recently moved to Chilliwack. That’s where he was living when he was befriended by Chris Snyder on Jan. 1 after selling him a second-hand computer desk he’d advertised on Craiglist.
“He came to my home and as we were chatting I shared the gospel with him,” Snyder told CTV News.
He said Chin attended a few services at the Potter's House Christian Fellowship in Mission before Snyder suggested he attend the church located closer to his home in Chilliwack. He would become a regular attendee there.
Snyder said when they first met Chin introduced himself as David and was emotional recounting his brother’s death after a life of crime. At the time, Chin was working at Mission's Pioneer Chrysler and at Anytime Fitness as a personal trainer. He later told Snyder he worked on log homes before starting a new job at Kal Tire just days before the shooting.
“He had a belief in God,” says Snyder. “He wasn’t ashamed to be a Christian and genuinely connected with our faith.”
Snyder heard Chin’s description of a difficult childhood without a mother and a checkered past he was trying to leave behind. The pastor was stunned that the man with an easy smile and good sense of humour – who’d gone horseback riding for the first time with the Snyder family – could be gunned down on a sunny morning outside his workplace.
Mounties said Chin’s killing was targeted, but haven’t provided a motive for the shooting. On Tuesday, IHIT released surveillance camera video showing an altercation in a parking lot, and another video showing two suspect vehicles. http://bc.ctvnews.ca/surveillance-video-released-in-fatal-shooting-of-calgary-gangster-1.3518681
One of the vehicles, a black minivan seen pulling up next to the area where Chin was shot and then driving away after a scuffle, was found burning under the Vedder Bridge just minutes after the gunfire.
IHIT is urging witnesses of the shooting, the arson or the flight of suspects from either crime scene to come forward to IHIT at 1-877-551-4448 or via email at ihitinfo@rcmp-grc.gc.ca. Anonymous tips are also accepted through Crime Stoppers.
The case is deeply personal for the Snyder family and many members of their congregation, as they grieve the violence against a man they believe was on the path to salvation after a dark past.
“He touched our lives. We really loved him,” says Snyder.
“He really thought his life had changed.”
