“Tremendously disturbing”: B.C. anti-gang organization concerned with child gang killing

The shocking gang killing of a child and his father in a shooting in Edmonton has sent ripples across Western Canada.

Those ripples reached B.C. quickly, leading to serious concerns about gang violence escalating in both Alberta and B.C.

“It was tremendously heartbreaking. You have an innocent child, an 11-year-old, (who) is just accompanying his father, who has been shot and killed in a targeted shooting,” Kal Dosanjh said, KidsPlay Foundation’s founder and CEO, and a detective with Vancouver police. “The most alarming aspect of that, according to the Edmonton Police Service … they say it was intentional.”

KidsPlay is a B.C.-based non-profit organization that focuses on keeping kids away from drugs, gangs and violence through opportunities like sports, workshops and counselling.

“When you have a moment like that where family members are being killed in gang shootings … it’s tremendously disturbing. That is collateral damage we normally don’t see in North America,” Dosanjh said. “This is very indicative of what the cartels do in Central and South America … a lot of that element of crime is being transplanted in our local communities.”

4:50 Edmonton police say man, 11-year-old son intentionally shot and killed

On Thursday, police said a known Edmonton gang member, 41-year-old Harpreet Uppal, was tracked down, shot and killed along with his 11-year-old son while they were in a car parked outside an A&W and Petro-Canada gas station near 50 Street and Ellerslie Road.

“This line in the sand with organized crime — it’s just changed,” EPS Acting Supt. Colin Derksen said in a Friday news conference. “Mr. Uppal was very well known to us, very high up in the gang drug world.”

Derksen said Uppal’s son’s death was not an accident.

“Once the shooter or the shooters learned that the son was there, they intentionally killed him. Shot and killed him,” he said.

Derksen said even for organized criminals and gangsters, killing a child is “beyond comprehension.”

The shooting took place around lunchtime in a crowded shopping plaza. Police said a second boy around the same age, a friend of the dead child, was also in the car, unharmed.

Investigators are certain the incident is related to the illicit drug market and gangs but the exact motivation for the shooting isn’t immediately clear. No arrests have been made.

A 25-year Edmonton Police Service member, who is now a criminologist, said he is worried the killings will spark more gang violence akin to what has been happening in B.C. for years.

“That’s just another level of evil, right? You’re going after innocent children that have nothing to do with the game,” Daniel Jones said.

4:45 Street-level disputes fuelling B.C. gang conflict, officials say

The gang culture in Edmonton until now, Jones said, has been made up of groups of people dealing drugs and, typically, there hasn’t been a lot of violence between them.

“It looks like we’re seeing that increase right now, right? We see a lot of violence in street-level gangs like ASAP and Redd Alert, but you don’t see a lot in the more organized crime groups because this kind of violence brings a lot of attention, and that’s bad for business when it comes to the drug business,” Jones said.

Derksen said there had been previous attempts on Uppal’s life.  Two years ago, he was shot at a Royal Pizza restaurant also in southeast Edmonton.

The Edmonton Police Service said the horrific killings could trigger revenge attacks.

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4:35 Former B.C. high school drug dealer on the lure of a gang lifestyle

— With files from Bob Weber, Jamin Mike, Karen Bartko and The Canadian Press