Kelowna gangster Kyle Gianis dead

After surviving several attempts to kill him, supposedly-reformed Kelowna gangster apparently took his own life, police say.

Officers were called to a campground near Enderby just after midnight Wednesday where a man was reported to have stabbed two women. The suspect was said to be a man acting erratically, possibly because of drugs.

About 2 a.m. Thursday, police found the suspect down an embankment near a river.

Emergency response police, armed with tear gas and a shoulder-fired 40mm Less Lethal Launcher, which shoots foam projectiles, found the man to be in distress.

He was “in medical distress due to what appeared to be selfinflicted injuries”, according to a press release from Dawn Roberts, director in charge of BC RCMP Communications.” Despite the efforts of police and medical personnel, the man died at the scene,” Roberts said.

The release did not identify the man. But it did say he “was one of two individuals targeted in a Kelowna shooting on July 31 and was the subject of public warning”.

That person was Gianis. Gianis and another man were shot after leaving a restaurant in the South Pandosy neighbourhood last Saturday night. Gianis was also shot in March outside a Kelowna gym.

He was also the target of attempted killings in Langley and Surrey before moving to Kelowna.

Sentenced to 13 years imprisonment in Washington State in 2008 for trying to smuggle methamphetamine into the U.S., Gianis was transferred to a Canadian jail in January 2012 and granted day parole in 2013.

The release from Roberts says police have contacted the Independent Investigations Office of B.C. as is routine in any such event.

Roberts says the two women who were stabbed at the Enderby campground suffered non-lifethreatening injuries. She did not say how, or if, they were connected to the suspect.