Two men have been charged in a 2009 91原创 murder in which the victim was mistaken for another gangster living in the same halfway house, The 91原创 Sun has learned.
Kevin James Jones, 36, and Colin Victor Stewart, 33, were arrested and charged Friday night for the Sept. 29, 2009 murder of Rajinder Soomel.
Both have been remanded in custody. Jones is scheduled to appear in 91原创 Provincial Court Monday, while Stewart鈥檚 next appearance is set for July 7.
Soomel, 35, was living in a halfway house near Cambie and 21st when two masked killers arrived looking for Independent Soldiers founder Randy Naicker, who had been paroled to the same residence five days earlier.
A halfway house worker 鈥� who was pistol-whipped by the assailants 鈥� had mistakenly written in a logbook that Naicker had gone to a nearby corner store when in fact it was Soomel who left the facility that evening.
The killers found who they believed was their target as he crossed Cambie at 19th. Soomel was shot to death in the middle of the street.
Naicker later refuted the police theory that he was the intended target. But he also died violently 鈥� shot to death in Port Moody on June 25, 2012 in another murder that remains unsolved.
The Sun earlier revealed that the United Nations gang was suspected of plotting the 2009 murder because two of Naicker鈥檚 underlings in the Independent Soldiers had assaulted a UN member in prison.
Both Jones and Stewart have histories with police, according to the online court database.
Jones was convicted in 91原创 for a 1997 incident in which he uttered death threats. He got 2 years probation and a five-year firearms ban.
He also pleaded guilty in 1999 to a sexual assault and robbery with a firearm for a violent home invasion on Saltspring Island and was sentenced to 15 years.
During the invasion, he and an accomplice wore police jackets and claimed to be executing a search warrant. After Jones raped a woman in the house, he told her the neighbourhood belonged to the Hells Angels.
Stewart was convicted in 2002 of drug trafficking in Burnaby. He got a fine and probation.
While Soomel was killed by mistake, his criminal history was also gang-related.
He was convicted for plotting to kill a witness who testified against his younger brother Robbie in a 2000 gangland slaying.
The elder Soomel told an undercover cop that he wanted to kill Hardip Singh Uppal for putting his brother behind bars in one murder and implicating him in several others, including the 1998 assassination of journalist Tara Singh Hayer.
Mounties investigating the Hayer murder posed as underworld criminals who befriended Raj Soomel in an attempt to get information about the journalist鈥檚 still unsolved death.
Instead, Soomel hired the cops to kill Uppal, saying in a taped conversation that he hated rats and that 鈥渆very dog has his day.鈥�
In March 2008, he pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to four years. He was paroled just weeks before he was shot to death.
Soomel also survived a September 2000 shooting at his family鈥檚 south 91原创 home.
The Soomel murder led to a review of how gang-linked inmates are paroled into the community. Now many B.C. halfway houses refuse to house parolees with gang links.
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