Women 2013
in
BUSINESS
BUSINESS
SPORTS
OPINION
COLUMNIST Robert Smithson says dress codes in the workplace can fall under legal scrutiny in court rulings from time to time.
THE KELLY SCOTT rink of Kelowna gave it their best shot, ending up third in the 2013 Scotties Tournament of Hearts women’s curling championship.
ALISTAIR WATERS says article that paints Kelowna as a city overrun by criminals is just plain incorrect.
Inside today’s issue!
serving our community 1930 to 2013
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TUESDAY February 26, 2013 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
▼ GANGLAND SHOOTING
▼ KELOWNA
Three arrested for Bacon murder in 2011
Mayor bristles at media slam of his city
Jennifer Smith STAFF REPORTER
Three men have been arrested for the murder of Red Scorpion gang leader Jonathan Bacon, who was gunned down in the summer of 2011 while sitting in an SUV at the entrance of the Delta Grand Hotel. Charged with first degree murder are Jujhar Singh Khun-Khun, 25, of Surrey, Michael Kerry Hunter Jones, 25, of Gibsons, and Jason Thompson McBride, 37, of North Vancouver, the RCMP’s Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit revealed Monday. Announced in a press conference shortly before the weekly Kelowna city council meeting—during which Mayor Walter Gray was quick to point out the case is more a provincial concern than a local one—the news came as a relief to those who were downtown on Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011 as three gunmen sprayed the SUV, hotel and surrounding buildings with bullets. “I think, like any member of the community, we’re relieved,” said Kelowna Art Gallery executive director Nataley Nagy. Her staff proved the embodiment of grace under pressure when a
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bullet pierce the gallery’s front window during the middle of Family Sunday programming. The group would receive a letter of thanks from then-mayor Sharon Shepherd for quickly evacuating the room where the bullet hit, corralling patrons to the back of the facility and locking them in a safe room. Nagy remembers the utter confusion of the aftermath, not knowing if it was safe to release people back out into the open as police descended on the scene. Thankfully, The Color Room hair salon, located directly beside where the SUV had stopped, was closed that day as another stray bullet landed in its bathroom. But several members of Bacon’s group were not so lucky, landing directly in harm’s way. The trio arrested on Friday were thus also charged for the attempted murders of Hells Angel Larry Amero, now jailed in Montreal, and Independent Soldier James Riach, who has taken cover in the months since, as they were seated in the SUV with Bacon. Two young women, Leah Hadden-Watts and
Alistair Waters ASSISTANT EDITOR
THE TARGET of a gangland shooting at Kelowna’s Delta Grand Hotel in August 2011 was Red Scorpion gang leader Jonathan Bacon (above). One of the three men arrested for his murder is Jujhar Singh Khun-Khun (right) of Surrey, along with Hunter Jones, of Gibsons, and Jason McBride, of North Vancouver. CONTRIBUTED
Kelowna’s mayor has lashed out at the Vancouver Province newspaper, accusing it of “lazy” reporting in a four-page spread that appeared on the weekend characterizing his city as a centre of violent crime in B.C. and a place plagued by poor development planning. “This was a slaughter. My God, it was four pages long, embellished with photographs,” said Walter Gray when asked about the article following Monday’s city council meeting. “Clearly the article had been written before (a Province reporter) talked to me,” he added. He noted the reporter who interviewed him was not the same one whose byline appeared on the story, and said his comments would be handed to an editor to use with the story. The mayor said the Walter Gray article, which he described as “brutal,” ignored many of good things the city has done in terms of both policing here and development, including having more kilometres of bike path per capita than any other city in Canada. Instead, it focused on a recent double murder that took place in West Kelowna, the August 2011 gangland-style shooting outside the Delta Grand Hotel that claimed the life of Vancouver gang leader Jonathan Bacon and what the newspaper called “the disjointed ugly patchwork of parking lots and strip malls.” Just as council was preparing to meet Monday afternoon, the RCMP in the Lower Mainland suburb of Delta announced three men—all from the Lower Mainland and all believed to have gang connections—were arrested Friday and have been charged in the Bacon shooting, which also injured three other people, two other Lower Mainland gang members and the niece of a Lower Mainland Hells Angel.
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