As someone on the Real Scoop noted Saturday, Jesse Margison and Troy McKinnon are back behind bars months after kidnapping and mutilation charges were thrown out against them.
Both men and two associates – Van Van Vu and Derek James Stephens – were arrested Friday night in connection with a Nov. 23, 2011 kidnapping and assault in Vancouver. They are to appear in Vancouver Provincial Court Monday morning.
Margison and McKinnon had kidnapping and aggravated ...
The long-awaited obstruction of justice trial for suspended Mountie Monty Robinson got underway Monday in New Westminster Supreme Court. Robinson was charged after fatally hitting motorcyclist Orion Hutchinson in October 2008.
Crown Kris Pechet told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Janice Dillon Monday that Robinson had taken a breathalyzer training course before the fatal accident that included defences to impaired driving.
Witnesses testified that Robinson was drinking at a Halloween party the night in question.
The Gang Task Force revealed more details about the dramatic kidnapping in which gangsters Jesse Margison and Tory McKinnon and four associates are now charged.
Supt. Tom McCluskie, who heads the GTF, said the man rescued by police last November 23, suffered serious head injuries.
He said the kidnapping group, linked to the Independent Soldiers, was putting GPS devices on the vehicles of possible targets and tracking them remotely using computers.
One of the men arrested in the Graham McMynn kidnapping, SamVu, was orignally only convicted of unlawful confinement because he wasn’t with his co-accused who grabbed the UBC student back in April 2006.
But the B.C. Court of Appeal sided with the Crown who argued that the act of kidnapping is a continuing offence until the victim is released and therefore convicted Vu.
Now the Supreme Court of Canada has weighed in, agreeing with the ...
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has ordered an assessment for an accused kidnapper on his fitness to stand trial after a severe beating in North Fraser Pre-trial jail.
Lawyer Jeffrey Ray explained in court Tuesday that his client Jesse Margison is still in a coma six weeks after the Aug. 15 attack.
And Ray told Justice Barbara Fisher that “it will take many, many months to ultimately determine whether [Margison] is left with significant neurological ...
A B.C. Supreme Court judge dropped drug charges against slain gangster Sukh Dhak Monday – a week after he and his bodyguard were gunned down in Burnaby.
Justice Gail Dickson granted the “abatement” or suspension of the case against Dhak, a 28-year-old who had been targeted for more than a year before he was killed along with Thomas Mantel.
Dickson told Dhak’s lawyer Emil Doricic that he was no longer required.
A long-time gangster who was facing kidnapping and organized crime charges has been found unfit to stand trial after sustaining head injuries in a jail beating.
Jesse Margison was seriously injured in an assault at North Fraser Pre-trial jail on Aug. 12 in which another inmate is alleged to have jumped on his head.
His lawyer Jeffrey Ray introduced medical evidence in B.C. Supreme Court Tuesday as to why Margison would not be able to ...
A gangster who suffered severe brain damage in a prison beating last August had no memory months later of being charged with kidnapping, assault and use of a firearm.
While Jesse John Margison made some improvement after the brutal attack in North Fraser Pretrial jail, he is still unfit to stand trial, according to a B.C. Review Board ruling, a copy of which was obtained this week by The Vancouver Sun.
Five gangsters used sophisticated tracking devices and encrypted blackberries as they plotted to kidnap a wealthy Metro Vancouver man in an attempt at a million-dollar ransom, B.C. Supreme Court heard Monday.
Crown Mark Sheardown laid out the prosecution’s theory of the Nov. 23, 2011 kidnapping of Eric Low during his opening statement at the trial of Troy McKinnon, Derek Stephens, John Powers, Cody Sleigh and Van Vu.
Sheardown described how Low was grabbed at gunpoint ...
Finally, after months of research and interviews, we’re launching our database on unsolved murders on the Lower Mainland from 2002 to 2013. I have been working on this project with Sun reporter Mike Hager. It originated from an idea I had been kicking around since Jan. 2012 that there should be a database with all unsolved murder cases listed just so people can read about them and possible provide tips.
Two Metro Vancouver moms who lost their children to gang violence six years ago say they hope a new anti-gang video campaign will help steer youth away from the deadly lifestyle.
Carol Kinnear, who’s featured in six videos created by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit and Odd Squad Productions, says she wants to spare other parents from the devastating pain that has rocked her family.
Kinnear’s daughter Brianna – who had been dating gangster ...
Long-time gangster Troy Dax McKinnon was sentenced to seven years Tuesday after pleading guilty to playing a “significant leadership role” in a 2011 Vancouver kidnapping thwarted by police.
B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen called the plan to kidnap drug trafficker Eric Low “a coordinated sophisticated scheme involving communication by encrypted cell phone and the use of computers and tracking devices.”
Cullen said McKinnon and his pals had expected a big ransom to ...
It said Darren Pelland, a prisoner at Surrey Pretrial Centre, was going to be “shanked and gutted.”
It was found by staff in the health care request box last Feb. 13, just days after Pelland was sent to the jail on robbery and weapons charges.
Two days after the note, Pelland was kicked and stomped on by an prisoner associated to the United Nations gang. The former associate of the Red Scorpion gang was assaulted again Oct. 12. He suffered a brain injury and several broken bones.
On Nov. 2, he filed a lawsuit against the B.C. government, alleging correctional officers were negligent by not keeping him safe from other gang-linked inmates despite the threats and warnings.
His is one of dozens of lawsuits against the B.C. government by inmates injured in jail attacks.
With hundreds of assaults in provincial jails every year, some of the victims, their lawyers and the union representing correctional officers say the violence has reached epidemic levels.
“The level of violence in Canadian provincial centres is out of control,” said lawyer Tonia Grace, who represents Pelland and several other inmates with lawsuits.
Dean Purdy, vice-president of the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, said the union has documented an increase in violent assaults in B.C. jails.
“We are very concerned about how the trend of violence is changing with the addition of more gang-affiliated inmates residing in our maximum security jails,” said Purdy who represents B.C. Corrections workers. “We are seeing both inmates and correctional officers targeted.”
Union statistics prove the increasing violence.
In 2014, there were 973 violent incidents by inmates on other inmates and on staff at B.C.’s nine jails. By the end of August 2015, there were already 907 incidents on record.
At that pace, 2015 is on track to be the most violent year ever, Purdy said.
Statistics provided by the B.C. government are slightly different, but show the same pattern with 893 incidents of prisoner violence in 2014 and already 953 by the end of September 2015.
All the data show that more than 90 per cent of the attacks are by inmates on other inmates.
Both Purdy and Grace say the government appears to lack intelligence on gangs and associates inside jails.
“We have requested the statistics on the number of gang-affiliated inmates in all six of our maximum-security jails and we’ve been told there are none, that they don’t exist,” Purdy said.
Grace has been trying to get details of B.C. Corrections policies on housing gang inmates through disclosure in one of the lawsuits. She’s received nothing.
Her experience is that federal prisons keep better intelligence on gangs and potential threats of violence against inmates.
One of the most worrying forms of attack in B.C. jail is the “hot buttering,” Purdy said.
“Inmates are heating up butter, mixed with sugar and bleach, in microwaves to extreme temperatures and throwing it in the face of their targeted inmate. This method of attack started about five years ago but has become a lot more prevalent recently,” he said.
“And it is a very violent attack and very concerning for us. …Often the results are severe burns to the face and disfigurement. On Oct. 23, we had an inmate who had a boiling mixture heated up in the microwave and thrown in his face. He had to be airlifted to hospital.”
He said “weaker inmates are being forced to conduct this type of violent assault on other inmates and officers and we have intelligence that gang-affiliated inmates are behind this.”
Justice Minister Suzanne Anton told The Vancouver Sun “the No. 1 priority for everyone in corrections is the safety for staff and the safety for inmates.”
She said that while the jail population is going up, “the number of assaults is actually fairly stable. Every single assault is taken extremely seriously. Staff are always correcting and making sure that the system is working.”
Overcrowding in the provincial institutions will ease when the new Okanagan Correctional Centre opens in early 2017 with 317 spaces, Anton said.
When inmates are processed at existing jails, they are “interviewed carefully” before a decision is made where to place them, she said.
“When an inmate comes in, they are always tracking and monitoring them. They are making adjustments for safety. That being said, a number of people are in there with violent backgrounds, with gang backgrounds, and occasionally it does happen,” Anton said. “But staff work extraordinarily hard to make sure (assaults) don’t happen, to make sure that staff themselves are protected and to make sure that other inmates are protected.”
Several inmates interviewed by the Sun said they told jail staff that they had issues with other gangs and associates but still got placed in dangerous situations.
Pelland says in his lawsuit that he told correctional officers “his safety was in jeopardy” on a unit dominated by Red Scorpions as he had ended his relationship with them and that he also had problems with the UN.
Scott Cameron, former vice-president of the Empire gang, said he was upfront with correctional officers when he was checked in to North Fraser in December 2010 after being charged with forcible confinement, aggravated assault and weapons charges.
“I told them who I was and everything. They put me on a unit that had another Empire member on it and some UN members who we were fine with. Then about a month later, they jockeyed some guys around and moved some guys onto our unit. It’s like they just forgot what I had told them,” Cameron said.
The assault by associates of the Independent Soldiers happened on Feb. 5, 2011.
“I got called out to the yard by one of the guys,” Cameron recalled. “I went outside and there was three other guys that were with him who kind of circled me from the back and he made some kind of comment and he grabbed me and took a swing at me and I got pushed over. So when I was on the ground, the four of them punched and kicked me at least for a good couple of minutes and one of them stabbed me in the face twice. So I have a significant scar under my eye and another one kind of up by my forehead.”
He’s lucky he didn’t lose an eye, he said.
Now out on day parole, working and with gang life a distant memory, Cameron is suing the government. The government says he waited too long to file the suit and that B.C. Corrections did its best to keep track of who’s who in gangland.
“The defendant says that criminal gangs are fluid in nature and constantly changing alliances and membership,” the response to Cameron’s suit says.
Cameron said inmates feel like they can’t sue while in pre-trial custody or while serving a sentence as they are perceived as ‘rats’ and they face the potential for even more violence inside.
He said he’s not looking for a big payout from the government. But the attack “haunted” him throughout his incarceration.
“I just basically want the problem to be fixed. Throw me something and apologize and tell me how you guys have changed your system,” Cameron said.
“I was making a lot of bad choices. And I hurt a lot of people in my past, right. I know there are people who would say this is karma. I understand that. But I have worked really hard to leave all that behind.”
Joshua Iorfida-Bonneville had no known gang affiliations, but was still violently attacked in North Fraser on Oct. 3.
He told the Sun he had been sent to segregation for tattooing in violation of jail rules. His roommate in segregation asked to see his tattoos. As Iorfida-Bonneville looked down, he was knocked unconscious. He never saw it coming.
When he woke up, he was in hospital with several broken bones in his face and jaw.
More than a month later, when a Sun reporter visited him at North Fraser, there was still visible swelling and bruising.
“This shouldn’t have happened. I know I’m lucky it wasn’t worse,” he said.
He has also hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit. He says inmates should be safe while in government care.
He is back in court on shoplifting and firearms charges in January.
Grace appreciates that people are unlikely to sympathize with gangsters awaiting trial or recently convicted.
But she said that while they are in the care of the government, there’s an obligation to keep them safe.
“They are the most vulnerable people. I mean they have nowhere to go. If you don’t like what’s happening to you, you can’t just pack your bag and leave,” she said.
And some have sustained life-altering injuries.
She represents Jesse Margison, who was an associate of the Independent Soldiers when his head was stomped on in North Fraser by prisoner Leonard Cardinal in August 2012.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Lawyer Tonia Grace shows expired Ensure given to inmate with broken jaw
He’s permanently brain-damaged. “Jesse Margison lost his life, in effect. He hasn’t got a life any more. He’s got an existence,” Grace said.
While Cardinal was convicted of the attack, new details have emerged in the civil suit of a possible conspiracy to kill Margison by the Hells Angels that Grace says should have been on the radar of jail staff.
Cardinal attended the same Catholic mass in the North Fraser jail as Hells Angel Norm Cocks just the day before the attack. There were phone calls between the two. And police visited Margison in jail in May 2012 to warn him the biker gang wanted him dead.
“Nobody is collating all this information … and we only find this out after the fact when we started getting all the discovery,” Grace said. “If we hadn’t sued, we never would have known the true story.”
A RAFT OF CASES:
The B.C. Justice Ministry says inmates who allege they were assaulted in B.C. jails have filed 40 lawsuits since 2012. Of those, six cases have been dismissed, one was discontinued and three were settled with a total payout by the government of $19,000. Here are some of the cases still before the courts:
Daniel Cunningham
He alleges in a lawsuit filed against the government in September that guards ignored his screams while he was beaten for more than five hours inside a cell at the Surrey Pretrial Centre in June 2015. The former Red Scorpion associate says he suffered brain damage and numerous broken bones in the savage attack inside a cell in a pre-trial unit populated by Red Scorpions, including accused killer Jamie Bacon.
Cunningham is seeking damages for his injuries and for violations of his Charter rights.
The lawsuit says Cunningham was attacked after “he had committed himself to leaving the gang/drug lifestyle.” He also says he asked not to be placed near Red Scorpions gangsters.
In a response filed Nov. 23, the B.C. government denies that Cunningham told them he should not be placed close to Red Scorpions. And it said Cunningham was at fault for going to the cell where he was attacked, in violation of jail rules. No guards heard any cries for help, the response says.
Joseph Caron
He had his jaw broken in two places during an assault at the Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre on Nov. 21, 2010.
He alleges in a suit against the B.C. government that a correctional officer locked him and his attacker inside his cell so “he was unable to avoid the attacker or seek help.”
He says he was unable to eat or drink or take medication for five days as he awaited surgery for his injuries.
He finally had surgery on Nov. 27 at Royal Inland Hospital.
Once back at the jail, Caron says he was not given special food even though his jaw was wired shut.
“He was unable to eat,” his suit says. “He was later supplied by health care with four bottles of Ensure replacement to drink per day. However these bottles had expired six months earlier.”
Caron was later acquitted of the charges he faced and filed his lawsuit against the government alleging correctional staff were negligent before his assault and violated his rights afterwards by providing sub-standard care.
The government says in its response that Caron “caused or contributed to the assault” by gambling with his attacker, by challenging him to a fight and inviting him into Caron’s cell.
And it says a corrections officer told Caron and his attacker to stop fighting twice but they didn’t comply, so an emergency procedure called a Code Yellow was activated.
Allen Ogonoski
He suffered a traumatic brain injury inside his cell at Surrey Pre-trial on Aug. 15, 2011, and is now permanently disabled.
His suit against the B.C. government says he “was intentionally assaulted and battered” by another prisoner named Chris Fulmer with connections to the Red Scorpion gang.
The government was negligent, according to the statement of claim, by not recognizing that, as a former member of the gang Surrey Thugs Inc., Ogonoski was incompatible with a Red Scorpion associate.
Ogonoski “had a clearly visible tattoo identifying him as such and … Mr. Fulmer had expressed a dislike for members of Surrey Thugs Incorporated,” the suit claims.
The government denies that Ogonoski was assaulted at all and says in its response that “any injuries sustained were caused or contributed to by a previously undisclosed medical condition, event or fall.”
If Ogonoski was in fact assaulted, the government says, “any such assault arose as a result of a specific dispute between Mr. Fulmer and the plaintiff and was unrelated to any other person, group or criminal organization.”
And the government said Ogonoski never stated “he had any contact concerns” with Fulmer.
A.B.
He was arrested in June 2012 on a U.S. warrant on charges of filing false tax returns in 1989, 1990 and 1991. He was transferred to North Fraser Pre-trial Centre where he was held until his extradition in December 2013.
The 59-year-old alleges in a suit filed against the B.C. government that he was assaulted 10 times while at the jail, including being sexually assaulted with a ketchup bottle.
He also claims he reported the first few assaults to Corrections officers and was told “that if he complained, he would be labelled a rat and the frequency of the assaults would only increase.”
The man, who is Muslim, said he also received while in jail “threatening notes which stated the plaintiff was a terrorist and must be punished.”
He says he abandoned his appeal of an extradition order and returned to the U.S. “because he feared he would be killed if he remained at NFPC.”
He pleaded guilty to the tax charges and got time served and is now suing for damages.
The government says in its response to the suit, filed on April 28, 2015 that it’s “currently investigating the allegations” made in A.B.’s lawsuit.
But it denies all but two of the assaults took place and says if A.B. suffered any injuries, he, himself, was negligent by “failing to take reasonable care for his own safety and well-being in the circumstances.”
P.S.
P.S., whom police had identified as being associated to the Dhak-Duhre-United Nations gang alliance, was invited to play cards on his unit in North Fraser Pre-trial Centre in late 2010 after being arrested on firearms charges.
While seated at a table, another prisoner approached him “from the side and threw hot butter mixed with bleach, sugar and jam on his neck. He was then attacked and beaten by three inmates,” his lawsuit against the government says.
He “suffered severe burns to his arms, face, neck, back and chest resulting in extreme pain and permanent scarring, as well as bruising and lacerations to his face and bruising to his ribs from the subsequent beating.”
His suit claims that without his knowledge, Corrections staff placed him on a unit that “already housed inmates who were known or suspected to be members and/or affiliates of the gang known as the Independent Soldiers.”
But the government counters that when P.S. was placed at the jail, he did not say which gang he was with, though he admitted he had some gang affiliations.
“It is not uncommon for inmates with various gang affiliations to be housed on the same living units at NFPC,” the response to P.S.’s suit says.
P.S.’s lawyer said the arrest and gang connections were publicized in the media at the time and Corrections should have known P.S. “would be vulnerable to a retaliation attack from rival gangs associates such as the Red Scorpions, Hells Angels and Independent Soldiers.”
Jesse Margison was a well-known young gangster with a violent history when he was attacked in North Fraser Pretrial in 2012. The injuries he suffered were so severe that he has permanent brain damage and will never be able to care for himself. His lawyers filed a lawsuit against the B.C. government.
I learned today that his suit was settled last year with a payout of $3 million, as was another case of a jailhouse beating that I wrote about in 2015.
Here’s my latest:
B.C. government pays millions to gangsters for jail beatings
Two men with gang links who were beaten while awaiting trials in Metro Vancouver jails have been awarded a total of almost $3.5 million by the B.C. government to settle their lawsuits.
Independent Soldier associate Jesse Margison was given a $3-million settlement after suffering severe brain damage when another inmate at the North Fraser Pretrial Centre stomped on his head in August 2012.
At the time, he was facing kidnapping charges with several others, but was found unfit to stand trial after the beating, which left him in a coma for several weeks.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Jesse Margison
Margison’s lawyers filed a civil suit seeking damages to cover the cost of his ongoing care. They argued that jail staff should have been aware of the threats Margison was facing from rival gangsters and taken steps to protect him.
And Allen Ogonoski, a former gang member of Surrey Thugs Inc., was awarded $496,600 for the brain injury he suffered after being attacked in Surrey Pretrial by a rival gangster on Aug. 15, 2011.
His suit against the B.C. government alleged that he “was intentionally assaulted and battered” by another prisoner named Chris Fulmer with connections to the Red Scorpion gang, and that jail officials were negligent by not recognizing that he was incompatible with the Scorpion.
Both lawsuits were settled in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017. Some details of the agreements were contained in an annual government report titled “Payments under the Crown Proceeding Act,” which was tabled last week.
In Margison’s case, the report said: “The plaintiff claims the province is liable for damages the plaintiff suffered when assaulted by Leonard Cardinal on or about Aug. 12, 2012.
“He claims that in not preventing the assault, the province was negligent and/or breached his rights under section 7 and section 12 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
And in both of the cases, the report said that a government lawyer advised that “the plaintiff might have a successful claim” and “that it is in the public interest to settle the claim.”
Lawyers for the two injured men could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Because of his brain injury, Margison was unable to assist his lawyers in piecing together the events that led up to the assault. They had filed several motions in B.C. Supreme Court to try to get North Fraser records related to gang inmates.
Cardinal pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in the attack, telling a Surrey provincial court judge that he had heard Margison was going to beat him so launched a pre-emptive strike. The judge didn’t buy his explanation, and noted the horrendous injuries that Margison suffered.
Margison’s lawyers later learned their client had been visited at North Fraser in May 2012 by police to warn him that the Hells Angels wanted him dead.
And they determined that Cardinal had been in contact with a jailed Hells Angel just a day before the attack.
Margison’s close associate and former co-accused Troy McKinnon, who was convicted in the kidnapping case, was shot to death in a gangland hit in Nanaimo in January.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has ordered an assessment on whether an accused kidnapper is fit to stand trial after a severe beating in North Fraser Pretrial jail. Lawyer Jeffrey Ray explained in court Tuesday that his client Jesse Margison is still in a coma, six weeks after the Aug. 15 attack.
A long-time gangster who was facing kidnapping and organized crime charges has been found unfit to stand trial after sustaining head injuries in a jail beating.
