Skip to main content

Funeral service was held Saturday for gangster Raphael Baldini, who was gunned down in a daylight shooting in a Surrey mall parking lot.

Funeral service was held Saturday for gangster Raphael Baldini, who was gunned down in a daylight shooting in a Surrey mall parking lot.At least three marked police cruisers surrounded the Burquitlam Funeral Home for the event, attended by dozens of family, friends and associates.The gathering then moved to Coquitlam's Robinson Memorial Park cemetery.Afterwards, Baldini's aunt, Stella Hubert, thanked everyone for attending the service, to which reporters were not invited."I got to see a little bit of who Raph had as friends. . . . He was a very, very special nephew and a very, very special friend to all of you," she said on his Facebook tribute page. "Once again I am very happy for all that showed up."Baldini, 21, was shot to death in a friend's leased Range Rover in the crowded parking lot of Surrey's Guildford Town Centre just after 5 p.m. Feb. 3.The young gangster was on bail for an assault charge laid in Vancouver last October. His co-accused in that case, Jaspreet "Justin" Chahil is also charged with several others in a Surrey drug-trafficking ring.Baldini was the person who rented the penthouse in Surrey's Balmoral Tower where gunmen burst in Oct. 19, 2007 and executed six people, including two innocent bystanders, in what has become known as the Surrey Six slaughter.Four of Baldini's friends -- among them drug-dealing brothers Michael and Corey Lal -- were targeted in the shooting.The Lal brothers' sister Jourdane paid tribute to Baldini on his online memorial page:"No words can explain how our family will miss your smiling face, you are one of the few who truly cared, who cried tears not for us, but with us," she wrote. "I can only hope to show the same love to your family as you always showed for us."Baldini's mother Cindy warned in a phone message to The Sun last week to stop referring to her youngest child as a gangster despite his link to the infamous Surrey apartment and a series of gun and assault charges.
On Facebook, she said her son "loved so many people and he gave so much of himself to everyone and asked for nothing back. I wish I can hold in my arms right now."Baldini had left Vancouver Provincial Court Feb. 3 after making an appearance in his assault case and heading to Surrey to pick up a new cellphone at the mall. It is not known if the killers were tailing him.He was not cooperating with police in the Surrey Six investigation before his murder.
In fact, just a month after the slayings, Baldini was charged with a number of firearms offences when he was stopped in a vehicle with a 9-mm Glock and a Walther p22c semi-automatic. Both were loaded.
Baldini's murder is one in a rash of public shootings in 2009 across Metro Vancouver.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expressi

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Timms, a resident of the San Diego community of South Park, refused to take off a black leather vest with the motorcycle club's “death's head” insignia when he reported for jury duty. He's a big burly man, 5 feet 8 inches, 250 pounds, with a full beard and auburn-colored, shoulder-length hair. At 7:45 a.m., Timms' stance got him booted from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice by sheriff's deputies, along with another Hells Angel who also refused to remove his insignia vest. Nine hours later, representatives of both the Superior Court and the sheriff's department apologized to Timms and club member Mick Rush for “misunderstanding” an order issued April 24 by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser. Rush also had been reporting for jury duty. “It all boils down to a misunderstanding of Judge Fraser'
Post a Comment
Read more

Rashawn and Deon Beneby Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip

''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an
2 comments
Read more

Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow

Rivi was, for a time, the hit-man of choice for Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow. Griselda was the grande dame of the Miami cocaine business, a Colombian mother of three, of impoverished origins, who slaughtered and intimidated her way to the top of a billion-dollar industry. She is a central character in this movie, the most deadly figure in a story in which the bodies are stacked like dominos. Conspicuous by her absence as an interviewee, she is one of the few key survivors of the era whom the film-makers were unable to coax before the lens. “Her release was imminent at that point, as was her deportation. I think she has changed her mind since, because we have been reapproached,” Corben says. contract killer Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, the director of Cocaine Cowboys Billy Corben says: “He told me where there is a body buried in Miami, by the Florida turnpike. It’s all developed now, malls and condominiums. He knows where all the bodies are buried. We told the police. I think he told the
6 comments
Read more