Eileen Mohan, whose 22-year-old son Chris was killed along with five other people at a Surrey, B.C., high rise in 2007, speaks to reporters outside B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on July 9, 2020.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The Crown and defence are jointly recommending an 18-year sentence for gang leader Jamie Bacon, who Thursday entered a guilty plea to a key role in a gangland shooting more than a decade ago that left six people dead, two of them innocent bystanders.
However, given the time Mr. Bacon has been in jail since his arrest in 2009, he would serve only five or six years further for his part in the 2007 Surrey Six shooting, his lawyer Kevin Westell said. Mr. Bacon ordered a hit on a rival drug dealer, leading to the shooting of the six people in an apartment unit in the city southeast of Vancouver.
Mr. Bacon is to be sentenced on July 23 for his role in the incident that came amid intense drug conflicts, which continues to haunt British Columbia as the deadliest such shooting in the province’s history.
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“It’s not outrageous,” Mr. Westell said of the proposed sentence in response to a question from the media following a B.C. Supreme Court hearing in which Mr. Bacon participated, speaking by video link from custody. “It’s a carefully crafted, joint submission proposal involving the Crown and the defence.”
The Crown declined comment on the plan. “We’ll be making our comments at the conclusion of sentencing,” Daniel McLaughlin, communications counsel for the BC Prosecution Service, said in an interview following the hearing.
Mr. Bacon participated earlier in a hearing held in a large courtroom where spectators, including the families of victims, and the media sat at an appropriate physical distance.
A subdued and taciturn Mr. Bacon tersely responded to questions from presiding Justice Kathleen Ker as she walked him through questions in which he took responsibility for the charges, declaring, “I do understand,” and, “Yes, I do,” among other responses.
He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit the murder of 21-year-old Corey Lal, one of the victims among the Surrey Six, and a rival to Mr. Bacon’s Red Scorpions gang.
When Mr. Lal declined to pay a $100,000 tax imposed by Mr. Bacon, Mr. Bacon deployed members of his gang to kill Mr. Lal at his “stash house” in a Surrey apartment building, according to a summary of the conspiracy to murder entered in court.
When the three agents of Mr. Bacon entered the apartment unit, they killed Mr. Lal, but also killed five other people, including 22-year-old student Christopher Mohan, who lived across the hall from Mr. Lal’s residence and 55-year-old fireplace repairman Ed Schellenberg, who was working in the unit.
Mr. Bacon also pleaded guilty to counselling the murder of an associate in an unrelated 2008 incident. The Crown and defence also proposed a 10-year concurrent sentence to the counselling charge.
Eileen Mohan, Mr. Mohan’s mother, said the prospect of the sentence was a concern. “It breaks my heart,” she said. “This crime came to my doorstep. We didn’t go to it.”
She said Mr. Bacon could have pleaded guilty years ago, but did so now because he has been effectively “cornered” and ran out of other legal options. “He made a calculated plea deal to set himself free,” she told reporters following the hearing.
Mr. Bacon has been in custody for 11 years, some attributable to a previous sentence for a firearms charge, with six years time linked to the charges to which he pleaded guilty.
Mr. Westell said he could not comment Thursday on whether Mr. Bacon was remorseful. “We’ll make our own comments about remorse at the sentencing hearing,” he said.
Mr. Bacon has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Mr. Lal, but that charge was not part of Thursday’s plea agreement. He was not charged in the other killings.
In 2014, two men were convicted of six counts of first-degree murder in the case. Their trial heard evidence that Mr. Bacon ordered an attack on Mr. Lal that led to the Surrey Six killings. Another man who helped the gunmen enter the building pleaded guilty to a charge of break and enter and was sentenced, in 2015, to a one-year prison term.
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Ian Bailey