XPost: can.politics, van.general, alt.true-crime   
   From: gregcarrsober@gmail.com   
      
   Two men charged in murder of halfway house gangster   
      
      
   VANCOUVER - Two men have been charged in a 2009 Vancouver murder in   
   which the victim was mistaken for another gangster living in the same   
   halfway house, Vancouver police confirmed Monday.   
      
   Kevin James Jones, 36, and Colin Victor Stewart, 33, were arrested and   
   charged Friday night with first-degree murder for the Sept. 29, 2009   
   murder of Rajinder Singh Soomel.   
      
   Both have been remanded in custody.   
      
   Vancouver Police Insp. Laurence Rankin confirmed what The Vancouver Sun   
   reported earlier that the killers were targeting Independent Soldiers   
   founder Randy Naicker, but got the wrong man.   
      
   “Investigators with the VPD Homicide Unit determined that Raj Soomel   
   fell victim to a gang-related shooting gone wrong,” Rankin said. “Mr.   
   Soomel was not the intended victim and was in the wrong place at the   
   wrong time when gunmen came looking for another target.”   
      
   Rankin also confirmed that the Naicker was warned by police about the   
   death threats against him.   
      
   “VPD investigators did speak with and inform Mr. Naicker that his life   
   could still be in danger. He would later be murdered on June 25, 2012,   
   in Port Moody. That homicide remains under investigation by the   
   Vancouver Police Department,” Rankin said.   
      
   He would not comment on whether Jones and Stewart are alleged to have   
   been hired by someone else or if the pair is suspected in Naicker’s murder.   
      
   “We believe it’s gang-related, but beyond that I am not about to say,”   
   Rankin said.   
      
   “I am not about to disclose that because the matter is still under   
   investigation.”   
      
   Soomel, 35, was living in a halfway house near Cambie and 21st when two   
   masked killers arrived looking Naicker, who had been paroled to the same   
   residence five days earlier.   
      
   A halfway house worker - who was pistol-whipped by the assailants - had   
   mistakenly written in a logbook that Naicker had gone to a nearby corner   
   store when in fact it was Soomel who left the facility that evening.   
      
   The killers found who they believed was their target as he crossed   
   Cambie at 19th. Soomel was shot to death in the middle of the street.   
      
   Naicker later refuted to a Sun reporter and the Parole Board of Canada   
   the police theory that he was the intended target.   
      
   The Sun earlier revealed that the United Nations gang was suspected of   
   plotting the 2009 because two of Naicker's underlings in the Independent   
   Soldiers had assaulted a UN member in prison.   
      
   Both Jones and Stewart have histories with police, according to the   
   online court database.   
      
   Jones was convicted in Vancouver for a 1997 incident in which he uttered   
   death threats. He got two years probation and a five-year firearms ban.   
      
   He also pleaded guilty in 1999 to a sexual assault and robbery with a   
   firearm for a violent home invasion on Saltspring Island the previous   
   December.   
      
   He was sentenced to 15 years.   
      
   During the invasion, he and an accomplice wore police jackets and   
   claimed to be executing a search warrant. After Jones raped a woman in   
   the house, he told her the neighbourhood belonged to the Hells Angels.   
      
   Stewart was convicted in 2002 of trafficking in Burnaby. He got a fine   
   and probation.   
      
   While Soomel was killed by mistake, his criminal history was also   
   gang-related.   
      
   He was convicted for plotting to kill a witness who testified against   
   his younger brother Robbie in a 2000 gangland slaying.   
      
   The elder Soomel told an undercover cop that he wanted to kill Hardip   
   Singh Uppal for putting his brother behind bars in one murder and   
   implicating him in several others, including the 1998 assassination of   
   journalist Tara Singh Hayer.   
      
   Mounties investigating the Hayer murder posed as underworld criminals   
   who befriended Raj Soomel in an attempt to get information about the   
   journalist’s still unsolved death.   
      
   Instead, Soomel hired the cops to kill Uppal, saying in a taped   
   conversation that he hated rats and that “every dog has his day.”   
      
   In March 2008, he pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced   
   to four years. He was paroled just weeks before he was shot to death.   
      
   Soomel also survived a September 2000 shooting at his family’s south   
   Vancouver home.   
      
   kbolan@vancouversun.com   
      
      
      
   Read more:   
   http://www.vancouversun.com/news/charged+murder+halfway+house+ga   
   gster/9964715/story.html#ixzz35aciDyv0   
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