Crown pushes for 12-year sentence for failed hitman

A young man from Hamilton who tried to murder a member of the Hells Angels at the Vancouver airport and conspired to murder another person should spend 12 years behind bars, a prosecutor argued Thursday.

In May, Knowah Ferguson, 21, pleaded guilty to the April 2015 attempt on Damion Ryan’s life and to conspiring to kill the other person, who has not been identified in court.

“Mr. Ferguson’s actions were calculated,” Crown counsel Mike Barrenger said in sentencing submissions. “They were the product of long-term planning and deliberation. Mr. Ferguson’s attempt to kill Damion Ryan was a targeted-assassination attempt which occurred at a busy food court at Vancouver International Airport.”

Barrenger told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten that Ferguson and another young man, who can only be identified as Witness X due to a publication ban, were living in Hamilton before coming to Vancouver. Ferguson, who had just turned 18 several months earlier, told Witness X he was working for an older guy and there was a lot of money to be made by going to Western Canada to do contracts, which meant killing people for money, said the prosecutor.

After being in Vancouver for several weeks, he told Witness X that they could make $200,000 by killing a person at the airport. Ferguson obtained firearms — two handguns and a silencer — in a meeting with two men in an alley near the YMCA in Downtown Vancouver.

In a video played in court, Ferguson can be seen sitting at a table in the airport food court behind and to the right of Ryan and then standing up, looking around and putting his hand into a purse containing the firearms. He walked directly behind Ryan, and pointed a gun at the back of Ryan’s head, pulling the trigger, said Barrenger.

“Mr. Ryan’s life was only saved by the fluke failure of the gun to fire.”

Ryan, who is currently believed to be in Europe and who has not provided a victim-impact statement, and Ferguson both fled.