Surrey Six victim’s mom upset by plea deal
Gangster Jamie Bacon set to plead guilty to conspiracy count in notorious slaying
A Surrey mother whose son was an unintended victim of the 2007 Surrey Six slayings is disappointed with a plea agreement prosecutors have reached with notorious Red Scorpion gangster Jamie Bacon.
Eileen Mohan said she will be in B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday when details of the deal will be fully disclosed.
But Mohan said she wanted Bacon to go to trial on the original first-degree murder and conspiracy charges laid on April 3, 2009.
“I would have preferred this to go to trial. Honestly, I would have taken my chances at the trial, whatever the outcome, rather than him cutting a sweetheart deal,” Mohan said.
“It’s very difficult to accept and understand how our laws are. I’m quite, quite emotional.”
Mohan’s son, Christopher, then just 22, was on his way to a basketball game on Oct. 19, 2007, when he encountered a killer in the hallway outside his family’s suite in Surrey’s Balmoral Tower.
Chris was dragged into a neighbour’s penthouse unit and shot in the head along with drug dealer Corey Lal, Lal’s brother Michael, his associates Ryan Bartolomeo and Eddie Narong, and fireplace repairman Ed Schellenberg.
Bacon is expected to plead guilty only to the conspiracy count related to Surrey Six.
He will also admit his guilt to counselling someone to commit murder in connection with an attempted hit on former associate Dennis Karbovanec on Dec. 31, 2008.
Karbovanec was not seriously injured in the shooting.
Postmedia revealed Monday that a plea deal had been reached in both cases. The surprise development came in a brief appearance by Crown prosecutors and defence lawyers before Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes on Monday morning.
Bacon’s lawyer Chris Johnson said: “We have arrived at a disposition on both of these matters with our learned friends in the Crown and we are proposing sentencing by way of joint submission.”
Details of the joint sentencing proposal were not released to Holmes.
Bacon won a stay of his Surrey Six charges on Dec. 1, 2017, after a secret B.C. Supreme Court hearing before Justice Kathleen Ker.
Then on May 21, 2020, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the judicial stays and ordered a new trial for Bacon, leading to negotiations and the plea deal announced this week.
Mohan said that Bacon dragged out the case for more than a decade.
“Then when he knows he’s cornered, he decides to plead guilty,” she said.
Bacon was in the middle of a jury trial on the counselling charge when the case was adjourned in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It had been expected to resume in August.
Two of Bacon’s fellow Red Scorpions gang associates — Cody Haevischer and Matthew Johnston — were convicted in 2014 of first-degree murder and conspiracy.
They are both appealing.