Suspects in dramatic kidnapping bust linked to organized crime

Share

Just as Vancouver police were readying plans to rescue a blindfolded kidnapping target from a vehicle driving down a Richmond highway, the car slowed nearly to a crawl before its occupants shoved the man out on to the road.

Nearby police teams swooped in to pick up the 29-year-old, who had been abducted last Thursday afternoon from a downtown Vancouver restaurant and the focus of an all-out police operation from the wee hours of Friday morning, Oct. 21.

But the drama wasn't over.

"When we knew that we had the hostage, there's an overwhelming sense of relief," Inspector Brad Desmarais of the Vancouver Police Department said on Friday, one week after the events took place. He added that tensions had been running high in a control room that was the centre of a major surveillance and rescue operation.

"Once he was in custody there was a lot of relieved sighs – but that was tempered, because we had the hostage, that's great, but we still had two vehicles – and they had split up."

The car in which the hostage had been travelling was still on the road, as was another suspect vehicle. It would take another 30 minutes or so before those vehicles were pulled over – one at a Delta restaurant and the other at a gas station in Langley.

Police were able to stop the cars and arrest the unsuspecting without incident at about 3 p.m. on Friday. The suspects were not aware that they were being monitored by police, Insp. Desmarais said. "It came as a complete surprise."

Details of the investigation, including the name of the kidnapping target, are under a publication ban. Of seven people arrested in relation to the incident, several are linked to B.C.'s Red Scorpions and Independent Soldiers gangs.

Police believe the local group was acting on behalf of an eastern Canadian criminal organization, the identity of which has not yet been determined.

The target was not known to police.

Calling it the "largest deployment of our kidnapping protocol in recent years," Insp. Desmarais said the kidnapping was financially motivated, but that the suspects did not demand a ransom. By letting the hostage go, it can be conjectured that those involved thought "it would further their ends," he said.

The operation kicked into gear with a report – initially of a missing person – that was determined to be an abduction.

Within hours, investigators zeroed in on a business on Richmond's No. 5 Road, setting up surveillance and looping in the Richmond RCMP.

Officers watched as a man, wearing a blindfold, was bundled into a vehicle that drove off, accompanied by another car.

The vehicle carrying the hostage pulled over, dumping him on the roadside, before the vehicles split up and drove away.

Charged with one count each of kidnapping and unlawful confinement: are Nazfar Mirhadi, aged 28, North Vancouver; Demple Brar, 42, Richmond; Thomas Crawford, 30, Kamloops; Robert Carr, 28, Abbotsford; Edmond Gammel, 24, Surrey; David Tarrant, 28, Kamloops and Veronica Moncur, 20, Kamloops.

There have been sporadic bursts of gang-related violence in the Lower Mainland in recent years, including the 2007 Surrey Six murders, in which six people – including two innocent bystanders – were gunned down in a Surrey apartment building.

Police warned of rising gang tensions last month, following the August killing of Red Scorpions leader Jonathan Bacon, who was gunned down outside a Kelowna casino.

In recent weeks, four gang-related cases have been unfolding at the downtown Vancouver Law Courts, resulting in stepped-up security at the building. Police say more gang cases are on the way.

The hostage incident, which involved the VPD as well as the Langley and Richmond RCMP departments, included 41 investigators along with surveillance and emergency response teams and was one of the biggest deployments under the VPD's kidnapping protocol in recent years.

Police seized equipment including a set of body armour, a spy kit used for countersurveillance, and two Glock handguns. They also found two tasers, one of which was disguised as a cellular telephone, knives, handcuffs, ammunition and rope