Hells Angel charged in two murder plots
Notorious B.C. Hells Angel Larry Amero has been charged with conspiracy to kill gangster rivals Sandip Duhre and Sukhveer Dhak, who died months apart in targeted 2012 shootings.
Amero, 40, was arrested in Ottawa Thursday by Vancouver police officers, with the assistance of Ottawa police and the Ontario Provincial Police biker enforcement unit.
He will be brought to B.C. to face the conspiracy charges, Vancouver police said Thursday.
Convicted gang hitman Dean Michael Wiwchar, 32, has also been charged with one count of murder in Duhre’s January 2012 assassination, as well as conspiracy to commit the murder of Dhak in November 2012.
While the Duhre murder charge against Wiwchar is new, he was identified as the suspected hitman when he was on trial in B.C. Supreme Court in 2015 on several firearms charges.
Justice Gregory Bowden said in his ruling convicting Wiwchar on the gun counts that Vancouver police linked a getaway car used in the Duhre hit to Wiwchar and witnesses described the shooter as having the same height and build as Wiwchar.
Bowden noted police had an informant who said someone named Alkhalil paid Wiwchar. Investigators later found $140,000 in Wiwchar’s safe deposit box.
Postmedia learned Wiwchar was recently injured in a stabbing inside federal prison.
Rabih “Robby” Alkhalil, an associate of both Amero and Wiwchar, was already facing charges in the Duhre murder and has made several B.C. court appearances.
Both Wiwchar and Alkhalil were convicted last year of first-degree murder for the June 2012 execution of John Raposo in Toronto’s Little Italy. Their Ontario trial heard Alkhalil brought Wiwchar in, describing him in a text message as the “best hitter.”
Wiwchar dressed like a construction worker with a reflective vest and dust mask and wore a wig to kill Raposo outside the Sicilian Sidewalk Cafe.
Until last August, Amero was charged in Quebec as an alleged leader of an international cocaine smuggling ring. But his charges were stayed after his lawyer argued the case took too long to get to trial.
Amero, a B.C. longshoreman and member of the West Point chapter of the Hells Angels, was seriously injured in the August 2011 Kelowna shooting that left Red Scorpion leader Jonathan Bacon dead. Independent Soldiers gangster James Riach was in the targeted Porsche Cayenne with Bacon and Amero, but escaped injury.
Three men linked to the United Nations gang — Jason McBride, Michael Jones and Jujhar KhunKhun — are on trial for the 2011 shooting. Sukh Dhak is alleged to have ordered the Kelowna hit, according to evidence at their trial.
After the Bacon murder, anti-gang police issued public warnings that anyone connected to the DhakDuhre group could be targeted.
A few months later Duhre was shot to death in the lobby of the Sheraton Wall Centre in downtown Vancouver. In November 2012, Dhak and his bodyguard Thomas Mantel were gunned down outside a Burnaby hotel.
Several associates on either side of the conflict were also murdered in cases that remain unsolved.