Blood on his face, shell casings on the ground Vancouver shootings have the headlines raging again about violence in the city

2 more dead, 2 wounded in four metro Vancouver shootings have the headlines raging again about violence in a city rocked by over a dozen in the new year. A woman was killed and a man wounded in Burnaby last night, while another man was shot dead in his car in East Vancouver. With “Blood on his face, shell casings on the ground — right now we’re investigating a homicide. It has all the earmarks of another gangland-style hit,” police say.The RCMP have now linked recent violence in Canada to drug cartels in Mexico. Police say that competing Mexican cartels are squeezing the flow of drugs through American cities, one of the major sources for Vancouver drug dealers. Gangs in Vancouver are fighting over that limited supply:“The distribution lines have been disrupted,” Supt. Fogarty said yesterday in an interview. “It’s like in any marketplace - the demand stays high, but there’s not as many distributors out there because the little guys get knocked off.“The bigger ones survive, the other ones don’t. And these guys don’t resolve things through a court process. It’s ‘I want my piece of the pie’ - well, there’s none left for you.”
The Mexican gang violence is a major element of Lower Mainland gang shootings that have killed at least nine people since the beginning of the year, Supt. Fogarty said.
Yesterday, embattled B.C. police were able to trumpet a rare piece of good news when they announced five arrests, including that of a leader of the UN Gang, one of the major gangs operating in the province, and promising more to come.Those arrested include Barzan Tilli-Choli, 26, of Vancouver, described by police as a UN Gang leader, who was charged with two counts of attempted murder in connection with a targeted hit outside a Surrey bar last month.