METRO VANCOUVER — A man gunned down in the parking lot of Guildford Town Centre Tuesday was the same person who rented the Surrey penthouse where six people were brutally murdered in October 2007, The Vancouver Sun has learned.
Raphael Baldini had appeared in Vancouver Provincial Court earlier Tuesday on assault and uttering threats charges laid in October 2008.
He was also facing a series of gun charges filed against him in November 2007, just weeks after six people — including innocent bystanders Chris Mohan and Ed Schellenberg — were shot execution-style in suite 1505 of the Balmoral Tower, which Baldini had been renting.
The 21-year-old Baldini was sprayed with gunfire in the parking lot of the busy Surrey mall about 5:20 p.m. Tuesday — the second of three targeted hits in Metro Vancouver in less than 24 hours.
He was transported to hospital, where he was declared dead just as his family was gathering.
A woman was found shot to death in Coquitlam hours after Baldini’s slaying. And just 20 hours earlier, James Ward Erickson was killed in another gangland-style murder in Whalley.
RCMP Supt. John Robin, who heads the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, said it does not appear that the two Tuesday-night murders are connected.
He said homicide investigators have been run ragged by the crush of new murder files.
“What can you say? The guys are being called out all the time. They are working extremely hard. The beginning of last year was extremely busy and now the beginning of this year is just the same,” Robin said.
IHIT spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr was just leaving the site of the Surrey murder Tuesday when he was called out to Coquitlam. There, the body of a woman in her 20s, the victim of an apparent shooting, was found slumped in a truck at Mason and Oxford.
Carr said police could not confirm the identity of the woman or the cause of death until the coroner’s arrival. However, they believe the woman is well-known to police.
Carr said the Surrey victim was driving in a white Range Rover in the west parking lot of Guildford Town Centre when shots rang out.
“Somebody walks up and shoots at the man,” Carr said.
Lisa Barber was outside washing windows at the Loose Moose Neighbourhood Pub, across the street from the mall, when she said she heard six or eight shots.
“I started counting them as soon as I realized what they were,” she said. “It did scare me though, right away. I was like, here we go.”
Baldini was associated with four of the victims in the 2007 Surrey apartment slaughter, all of whom were involved in drug trafficking. Police earlier confirmed that suspects in the slaying have been identified as members of the Red Scorpion gang, though no one has yet been charged.
Metro Vancouver has had a rash of shootings over the last two weeks, as well as nine homicides so far in 2009. Of the murders, five have been the result of gunplay. Many of the shootings have occurred in public places like the Surrey mall parking lot. Shots were also fired at a busy intersection in Abbotsford two weeks ago — that time at one of the notorious Bacon brothers, who escaped unharmed.
On Monday, Whalley’s Parkside Apartment building was the scene of its second gun incident in two months with the slaying of a 25-year-old resident.
Erickson, who had a minor criminal record for mischief and causing a disturbance, was gunned down about 9:15 p.m. on the second floor of the three-storey building at 13352 - 105A Ave.
IHIT’s Carr said police were originally called after shots were fired. They found Erickson already dead inside an apartment.
The building is just off the Whalley Ring Road and near the Surrey Central SkyTrain station — a popular area for drug traffickers and their clients. Carr said Erickson lived in the Parkside, which had one- and two-bedroom suites for rent Tuesday.
In December, Surrey RCMP raided a suite in the same building to arrest 21-year-old Shane Gidon, who was wanted for attempted murder in connection with two north Surrey shootings.
At the time, police said they found a machine gun in the apartment where Gidon was located.
Police remained on the scene of Erickson’s slaying most of Tuesday. The young man’s body was removed by the B.C. Coroners’ Service about 10:30 a.m., a grey blanket draped over the stretcher as Erickson was loaded into a white van.
Barry Coldwell, who lives in an apartment complex next door, said the Parkside is nicknamed “the rock” because of the amount of drug trafficking going on inside.
“I am moving out of this neighbourhood. It is horrible,” he said.
He said there are drug dealers, prostitutes and condoms littering the neighbourhood streets and parking lots. “This neighbourhood is at least as bad as the Downtown Eastside. There’s no difference,” Coldwell said.
Carr said that when police attempted to secure the scene, “officers were met with some resistance from individuals from inside the building.”
“Four persons were detained for obstructing police and brought to the Surrey RCMP office. All individuals have been spoken to by police and all but one has been released,” Carr said. “The one individual that remains in custody is not a suspect in this incident, he was held on an outstanding warrant of arrest.”
Carr said it was too soon to know if Erickson’s slaying was related to gangs or organized crime, but it bore common traits with other recent shootings.
kbolan@vancouversun.com, with a file from Catherine Rolfsen
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