VANCOUVER – Killers of an Indo-Canadian connected to gangs, who was wrongly killed when two men targeted the wrong “brown gangster”, have been arrested in connection with the 2009 murder outside a halfway house.
Kevin Jones and Colin Stewart are accused of killing Raj Soomel.
Soomel, 35, was shot to death on Cambie Street in September, 2009. Vancouver Police described it as a gang-related shooting.
Investigators later said they believed another man who was also living at the halfway house was the intended target, and Soomel was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, reported News 1130.
VPD Inspector Laurence Rankin says Colin Stewart, 32, and Kevin Jones, 35, were arrested last week and have been charged with first-degree murder.
“Investigators with the VPD homicide unit determined that Raj Soomel fell victim to a gang-related shooting gone wrong,” says Rankin.
Police believe the intended target was Randy Naicker, the founder of the Independent Soldiers gang, who was shot to death almost three years later in Port Moody.
Soomel’s death led to Vancouver’s mayor saying people who could be targeted by gangs shouldn’t be kept in communities near children, and the organization that ran the halfway house said it would no longer accept criminals with gang ties.
Soomel was living in a half-way house in the neighbourhood, having been released on released on parole the previous August. He had been convicted of plotting to kill a man who implicated his younger brother in the murder of a controversial newspaper man who was described one lawyer as a “shit disturber. ”
Upon Soomel’s release, the parole board said the threat of his being killed was very real, and his presence compromised the safety of the community because of the possibility of violent retribution.
