Man convicted in Bacon case pleads guilty in 2nd murder
One of three men recently convicted in the shooting that claimed the life of gangster Jonathan Bacon has pleaded guilty to a second gangrelated murder conspiracy.
On May 2, Michael Kerry Hunter Jones, 30, received an 18-year jail term after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit the August 2011 murder of Bacon, a notorious member of the Red Scorpions gang, and several others.
Then on Thursday, he pleaded guilty to conspiring with UN gang associate Sheldon Paine and others to murder Randy Naicker, a high-ranking and founding member of the Independent Soldiers gang who was shot to death in Port Moody on June 25, 2012.
Crown counsel David Sim told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gregory Bowden that the two murder conspiracies involving Jones were the result of the same ongoing gang conflict between the Dhak/Duhre group and the Wolf Pack group.
Naicker’s gang was aligned with the Wolf Pack while Jones and Paine were allied with the Dhak/Duhre group.
Following a joint submission by the Crown and defence, Bowden imposed on Jones a sentence that will run concurrently with his jail term in the Bacon case out of Kelowna.
The judge noted that the Naicker murder, which involved him being shot outside his vehicle, occurred on a busy street with members of the public exposed.
“The conspiracy was highly sophisticated, involving the GPS tracking of Mr. Naicker’s vehicle and the co-ordination of numerous persons,” said the judge. “And also the murder was planned and executed in the context of the drawnout gang conflict.”
Two masked men shot Naicker, 35, multiple times at close range and then sped away in an SUV driven by a third person. Two firearms were thrown out of the vehicle as it fled the scene.
Jones, who was 25 at the time, was directly involved in the planning and execution of the murder, according to a statement of facts filed in court Thursday.
Before the shooting, he and Paine — who in August 2016 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit the murder of Naicker and received a five-year sentence — went to the building where Naicker lived and entered the underground parking lot using an access fob.
After entering the parking lot, Jones identified Naicker’s vehicle and installed the GPS tracking device to its underside. Jones then monitored the device on a laptop computer.
Throughout the day of June 25, Jones was in communication with the occupants of the SUV and on that day, he and Paine went out to Port Moody while Jones actively monitored the GPS.
The two men located Naicker’s parked vehicle and observed it from a Starbucks location, with Jones relaying the location of the vehicle to the shooters.
Just before the shooting, Jones and Paine left the Starbucks and parked in a nearby laneway where they heard shots being fired and saw the getaway vehicle leaving the scene.
They followed the SUV and met with the occupants in a residential neighbourhood in Burnaby, where stolen licence plates that had been affixed to the SUV were disposed of.
In sentencing submissions, defence lawyer Matthew Nathanson told the judge that the guilty plea came after considerable discussions with the Crown and represented an acceptance of responsibility and a demonstration of remorse for his client.
He said the plea came at a relatively early stage and brought an end to what would have been a lengthy trial with a number of legally and factually complicated constitutional arguments.
The Vancouver police oversaw the Naicker murder investigation under an agreement they had with the Port Moody police at the time.
Vancouver police Supt. Mike Porteous said investigators travelled all over the world to gather evidence and worked with the team investigating the Bacon murder in Kelowna.