Former UN gangster says he aided attacks on targets in justice system
A United Nations gang boss on the run from a B.C. murder charge arranged for shootings and a firebombing at Metro Vancouver homes of people linked to the Justice Institute, B.C. Supreme Court heard Friday.
Conor D’Monte used encrypted BlackBerry messages to tell a former underling in the UN to target several houses for attack, according to testimony by an ex-gangster who can only be identified as C due to a sweeping publication ban.
The witness is in his second day of testimony at the murder trial of Cory Vallee.
Both Vallee and D’Monte are charged with conspiracy to kill the Bacon brothers over several months in 2008 and 2009, and with the first-degree murder of Bacon associate Kevin LeClair in February 2009.
Both accused fled B.C. several years ago, but Vallee was later arrested in Mexico and brought back to face the charges. D’Monte has never been located. Despite being on the lam, D’Monte still got involved in the violence back home, C told Justice Janice Dillon.
C said he received an encrypted message from D’Monte sometime in 2011.
“He asked me if I had anyone who was willing to shoot up some houses,” C testified.
C said D’Monte explained that his drug dealer friend “Vinnie” was concerned about some “jackers” ripping him off, so wanted to send them a message.
C found someone willing to do the attacks and they agreed they would split the payments.
He said D’Monte maintained a “driver” in Metro Vancouver, who delivered guns for each shooting.
The addresses of the homes to be targeted were sent one by one on the BlackBerry, C said.
The first was in Surrey.
“We initially drove up, scoped out the house,” C said.
He sent his associate back to fire the shots in the middle of the night to lessen the chance of witnesses or casualties, he testified.
“It was just pure intimidation,” he said of the purported motive for the shootings.
C said his associate shot houses in Surrey, Richmond and near the Burnaby-Coquitlam border. They also firebombed a camper at one of the Surrey homes.
He said “Vinnie” didn’t believe the attacks were happening because there were no news reports at the time.
But C and his associate continued to get paid because D’Monte trusted they were completing the jobs.
They received $12,000 to $15,000 for each shooting and $6,000 to $8,000 for the arson, C testified.
He said he started having a bad feeling about the arrangement when he noticed the houses they were scouting appeared “normal” and not like homes of people in the drug trade.
“The alarm bells were ringing off in my head,” he said. “And then it not being in the news, the story didn’t seem quite right.”
So he told D’Monte he didn’t want to do any more of the jobs.
C said he was “pissed” when about six months later there were news stories about the attacks and he learned they were against people linked to the Justice Institute.
“I realized that we made a huge mistake getting involved in this thing, that they were targeting the Justice Institute, potentially cops, which is a huge no-no,” C testified. “You don’t go kicking the bee’s nest and shooting at cops’ house.”
D’Monte’s friend Vincent Eric Gia-Hwa Cheung was eventually charged and pleaded guilty to 18 counts for the attacks that continued from April 2011 until January 2012.
Last year, he was sentenced to 13 years in jail.
C said he had met Cheung, who was a personal friend of D’Monte’s and not a UN gang member.
C also said that while he kept in touch with D’Monte after he fled Canada, he has never known where the fugitive is hiding.
D’Monte was appointed head of the UN after the gang’s original leader Clay Roueche was arrested in the U.S. in May 2008, C testified. But after D’Monte left Canada in 2011, there was a meeting held in Vietnam attended by C and others from B.C.
At the meeting, C was voted in as the new leader, he testified.
People in attendance also imposed a new strict edict.
“There was a rule that basically if you rat, you die, and if you run, then your parents or family dies,” C said.
The trial continues.