Trial opens for man charged with BC murders of gangster, innocent teen

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Six years after a Coquitlam teenager was killed by a stray bullet during a gangland hit in Vancouver, his accused murderer is finally on trial.

Day 1 of the double murder trial in B.C. Supreme Court heard Alfred Wong, 15, let out a yell from the back seat of the family vehicle as he was shot in the chest as his mother, Chelly Wong, drove east on Broadway around Ontario Street after a family dinner out.

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Crown prosecutor Don Montrichard said in his opening remarks Monday that Alfred’s mother, confused by her son’s scream, continued driving for almost another block before realizing something was wrong and pulling over.

Dashcam footage from the family’s car that captured Alfred’s scream is expected to be played during the trial. The trial is scheduled for 115 days and will likely run until November.

Carter Kane, 28, is charged with the second-degree murders of both the 15-year-old and Kevin Whiteside, 23. He is also charged with aggravated assault of a second passerby, who missed getting killed by millimetres by another stray bullet that grazed his cheek.

Kane has pleaded not guilty to all three charges.

It’s the Crown’s theory that Kane shot the gun that killed Alfred and Whiteside and almost killed Shaiful Khondroker.

During breaks in the trial Monday, Kane turned and grinned at his supporters in the public gallery.

Montrichard conceded the Crown’s case is “almost entirely built on circumstantial evidence” because the only possible witness, Whiteside, was killed, the shootings weren’t captured on CCTV footage in the area, and the murder weapon has never been found. It took four years for charges to be laid.

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He told Justice Catherine Wedge and the seven-man, five woman jury that the different pieces of evidence he and three other prosecutors will present to the court will have to be viewed as “pieces of a puzzle” that, taken as a whole, will prove Kane killed Alfred and Whiteside, and just missed killing the other bystander.

Vancouver police Const. Darren Cho, working solo that night, was the first to arrive at Alfred’s family car that was pulled over and surrounded by a swarm of people who waved him to stop, he testified as the first of an expected 50 Crown witnesses.

“I was flagged down and I saw a boy in the back seat of the vehicle, he wasn’t moving,” said Cho.

“Everything was super-chaotic at times, so we were trying to piece it together,” said Cho, who was soon joined by Const. Anthony Wong. He said they didn’t know at first if that incident had anything to do with the shots-fired call a block away, at East Broadway and Ontario Street.

The officers removed Alfred from the vehicle and cut his shirt off, “and we saw a bullet wound in his chest … there was no exit wound. There was no blood coming out at all.”

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Autopsy results show the bullet that was found in Alfred’s body entered on the right side of chest, three inches below the nipple, and it damaged his organs, including the stomach, spleen, kidney and heart, court heard. He died two days later, on Jan. 15, 2018.

Court also heard that Whiteside was struck by two bullets, one in the head and the other to his lower leg.

Court heard on Monday that a man named Matthew Navas-Rivas and his girlfriend had left the Indochine restaurant and were getting into a cab at the corner of East Broadway and Ontario Street. The prosecutor said Whiteside ran after the cab and was trying to shoot at the cab when he himself was gunned down.

Montrichard itemized the Crown’s case against Kane that included his movements as captured by the location of his cellphones, someone using his fob to enter into his Surrey apartment building at certain times, his appearance at a downtown Vancouver apartment that was known to police as a drug den, and DNA evidence in a van central to the shooting that showed up at certain times and places that together he said proves his guilt.

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