The Metro Vancouver area is reeling after a surge in gang-style violence that's included six shootings in six days -- four of them fatal.
The latest shooting happened at 11 p.m. Sunday outside a grocery store near West Broadway and Arbutus St. in Vancouver's west side.
The suspect fled on foot and at least one report suggests the victim has gang ties.
The carnage began a week ago when James Erickson, 25, was found murdered in an apartment in the Whalley neighbourhood in Surrey. Erickson is well known to police.
On Feb 3. Raphael Baldini was shot to death as he sat in a luxury SUV outside a Surrey mall. The 21-year-old held the lease on a Surrey apartment where six people -- two of them innocent bystanders -- were killed in October 2007.
The same day Baldini was killed, Brianna Kinnear, 21, who had escaped from jail while serving time for drug trafficking, was found shot to death in a car in suburban Coquitlam.
Then on Friday, 26-year-old Kevin Robert LeClair was shot in his truck at a grocery store in Langley. He died from his injuries this weekend.
LeClair is a known associate of Abbotsford's notorious Bacon brothers, two of whom are due in court on Monday on gun and drug charges.
Police have made no arrests in any of the shootings, and are warning of an escalation of gang violence.
"We don't want to be alarmist," RCMP spokesperson Peter Thiessen told CTV. "I don't want to characterize it as a gang war. Certainly it appears these incidents are happening far too often."
"These gangsters are settling their differences in an open area, which is concerning. Basically they're turning these public areas into their boardroom and they're conducting their business in a very open, brazen way."
There have been 11 homicides in Metro Vancouver in 2009.
