Man charged in 2004 Saskatoon murder guilty in rural Alberta killing

CALGARY – A man charged with first-degree murder in a 2004 shooting death in Saskatoon has been found guilty in a rural Alberta killing.

Neil Lee Yakimchuk was convicted on Thursday of first-degree murder in the death of his friend, Juan Carlos Dequina.

Yakimchuk served has a pallbearer at his funeral and was to have become his brother-in-law.

Court heard Dequina was driving home from his girlfriend’s house when he was lured to a rural intersection and shot once in the back of the head.

Yakimchuk told undercover police officers it was over a $40,000 drug loan.

Watch below: Neil Lee Yakimchuk found guilty in shooting death of Juan Carlos Dequina

A second person charged in Dequina’s death, Kenneth Tingle, pleaded guilty last October to manslaughter. He testified he had gone to the scene in a getaway car he believed was to be used in a robbery.

Both Yakimchuk and Tingle are charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Isho Hana in Saskatoon.

Hana, 34, was gunned down in the middle of the 2100-block of Preston Avenue South on April 15, 2004.

Investigators believe Hana’s murder was a contract killing carried out during an escalating drug turf war in Saskatoon.

They were charged in December 2011 following an 11-month joint investigation between police forces in Calgary and Saskatoon.

Revelations of Hana’s murder were first uncovered by Calgary police during their investigation into Dequina’s death.

Yakimchuk and Tingle are scheduled to go to trial in Hana’s death later this year.