Vancouver Sun

Witnesses to Bacon killing looked gunmen in the eye

Trial hears details of violent scene where shooters targeted Hells Angels’ vehicle

- KIM BOLAN kbolan@postmedia.com blog: vancouvers­un.com/tag/realscoop twitter.com/ kbolan

Judith Jones briefly broke down in B.C. Supreme Court on Wednesday as she described coming face-to-face with a masked gunman outside the Delta Grand Hotel just before he finished off his target.

The 69-year-old had been at the neighbouri­ng casino on the afternoon of Aug. 14, 2011 with her daughter and they were driving out past the hotel.

“Just as she started to pull forward, we heard a bunch of bang sounds and I think I said, ‘Who the heck is letting off firecracke­rs on a Sunday afternoon?’ And then we realized there was shooting going on,” Jones told Justice Allan Betton at the trial of three men accused of killing gangster Jonathan Bacon.

“The shooter stopped and looked at us, and as he looked, he aimed his gun toward us. There was another shooter on the left who also looked at us.”

After the chilling encounter, the gunmen continued firing at a white car that rolled into a tree, then crashed into a wall, she said.

One of the shooters walked up to the driver’s side and fired three more shots, Jones testified. The trial has already heard that Hells Angel Larry Amero was behind the wheel of the white Porsche Cayenne.

“(The other) shooter who was on the passenger side of the vehicle — there was a man on the ground between the wall and the car, and he shot him once,” she said.

The man on the ground was Bacon.

Jones said she watched the gunmen, dressed all in black, get into another SUV parked in the courtyard and take off from the scene.

Jones was one of four Kelowna residents who told their harrowing stories Wednesday at the trial of Jujhar Khun-Khun, Jason McBride and Michael Jones.

All three are charged with the first-degree murder of the Red Scorpion gang leader, as well as the attempted murder of the four others in the Porsche — Amero, Independen­t Soldier James Riach, Leah Hadden-Watts and Lyndsey Black.

Dianne Hofer had been checking out paddleboar­ds in a nearby store with a friend and his son when they got into their car about a block from the scene.

Driving toward the hotel, Hofer heard what she thought was the “sound of firecracke­rs going off.”

Hofer said her friend “seemed to get distressed, and said we need to turn around.”

“I looked ahead and saw what looked like fire coming out of the end of a gun,” Hofer said.

She noticed at least one gunman, and possibly two, shooting at a white SUV in the hotel’s entrance.

Her friend said they needed to turn around and get out of there.

“It was probably my worst Uturn ever. ... I was a bit frazzled at the time,” Hofer said.

She said she saw what looked like the suspects’ SUV racing past her car away from the shooting.

Her friend “commented that we should go back because there was shooting and people could be hurt.”

So they did.

Her friend began doing CPR on Bacon, while she stayed in her vehicle with her friend’s son.

Bob and Stephanie Bjarnason were also near the Grand Hotel on the afternoon of the shooting.

Bob testified that he and his wife wanted to go to the Lake City Casino on the hotel grounds.

“We had a $5 voucher for the slot machines at the casino and also just to walk around and see the sights,” he testified.

They made close to $20 and soon left the casino, walking down Water Street near the hotel. They heard the bangs.

“I looked up into the sky because it sounded like fireworks to me,” Bob testified.

He then looked ahead at ground level.

“At that point I saw two individual­s chasing a white car and dischargin­g firearms at it,” he said.

They were both dressed in black, he said, estimating they fired between 40 and 50 shots throughout the ordeal.

He took cover behind a nearby cedar tree.

Meanwhile, Stephanie had run back to the casino and warned the people inside not to leave before realizing her husband hadn’t followed her.

She reunited with him on the street minutes later, she testified.

The trial continues.

 ?? DON SIPOS ?? Gangster Jonathan Bacon was killed and four others in the same vehicle were shot at in Kelowna outside the Delta Grand Hotel in August 2011. Three men are on trial facing murder and attempted murder charges.
DON SIPOS Gangster Jonathan Bacon was killed and four others in the same vehicle were shot at in Kelowna outside the Delta Grand Hotel in August 2011. Three men are on trial facing murder and attempted murder charges.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada