Golf club attack leads to charge against gangster
A longtime member of the Independent Soldiers gang has been charged with aggravated assault after a man was beaten with a golf club at a lake in the Okanagan on Saturday.
Jody Archie York, 43, appeared in Vernon provincial court on Monday and was released on $2,000 bail.
York was charged after the attack at Monte Lake, between Vernon and Kamloops, just before 8 a.m. Saturday morning.
Sources said the victim was with friends on one side of the lake when they heard a woman screaming from a group on the other side. He yelled to the group to shut up.
A few minutes later, it is alleged, York arrived at the victim’s campsite and began hitting him with the golf club.
The man was knocked unconscious and was twitching before his friend jumped in with a machete and cut York. The victim of the golf club attack and York both ended up in hospital.
A Vernon RCMP media officer, Cpl. Tania Finn, said officers were called to “a serious assault” in the 3900 block of Highway 97 in Monte Lake on Saturday.
“The incident allegedly began as a verbal altercation; however, escalated to an assault involving a golf club and a machete.
The victim, who was in the area camping with friends, was not known to the suspect, she said. “The victim sustained a serious injury and remains in hospital.”
Two years ago York and others wore Independent Soldiers shirts at a golf tournament at a time when police said the gang was expanding across B.C.
York has a long history of trouble on both sides of the B.C.-Washington state border.
In 2011, he was sentenced in the U.S. to five years in prison as a leader of a major international drug-smuggling ring who prosecu- tors said worked on behalf of B.C. Hells Angels.
York said at his sentencing that he was reformed and had turned away from gang life. However, police sources said this week that York has maintained his gang connections.
Some in the Independent Soldiers have formed an alliance with some gangsters in the Red Scorpions and Hells Angels to create the Wolf Pack.
In the U.S. drug case, York was described as the chairman of the board of the smuggling organization. He pleaded guilty in Seattle in November 2010 and was sentenced several months later.
York admitted that beginning in 2003 and continuing until September 2006, he entered into an agreement with associates Rob Shannon, Devron Quast and “others known and unknown” across the border.
“Shannon and York arranged for multiple loads of marijuana to be smuggled into the U.S. from Canada,” his plea agreement says.
“The marijuana, which was owned by others but entrusted to Shannon and York for transportation, was hidden in truckloads of beauty bark, crates, hollowed-out logs, pipes, trailers and various other means, and crossed into the state of Washington.”
During the three-year U.S. investigation, police seized more than 770 kilograms of cocaine, more than 3,000 kilos of B.C. bud and about $3.5 million in cash.
In B.C., York’s run-ins with the law date back to when he was 19, according to provincial court records.
He was at earlier convictions for assault in Surrey, Abbotsford and Victoria.
His Langley home was targeted in a shooting in 2008.