Skip to main content

Barzan Tilli-Choli of Vancouver is charged with two counts of attempted murder.


Barzan Tilli-Choli of Vancouver is charged with two counts of attempted murder.The RCMP and Vancouver police have arrested two men they allege are major players in a notorious Vancouver-area gang blamed for the rash of violence that has plagued B.C. this year.After a lengthy investigation, two members of the United Nations gang, one associate member and two women, were arrested on the weekend and charged with various weapons and murder offences, said police."This is a major strike against the UN gang," said Gary Bass, RCMP deputy commissioner, at a news conference in Vancouver on Tuesday.The alleged gangsters were arrested after a targeted shooting in Surrey, B.C., on Feb. 16.During that attack, a Range Rover stopped at an intersection, when an SUV approached and shots rang out, striking the male driver in the left shoulder.
Police said the 26-year-old man is one of the biggest threats to public safety in the Lower Mainland."We caught the bad guy," Vancouver police Chief Jim Chu said Tuesday."This is a major blow, to the gangs generally, and to the UN gang, specifically."Also charged with attempted murder are Aram Ali, 23, of Vancouver, and Nicola Cottrell, 26, of New Westminster, B.C.Ali is a known associate of the UN gang and Cottrell is linked to Tilli-Choli, police said.Charged with one count of occupying a vehicle knowing there was a firearm in the vehicle is Sarah Jane Trebble, 28, of West Vancouver.Trebble is also associated with Tilli-Choli.Karwan Saed, 32, of Burnaby, B.C., is also charged with being an accessory after the fact to attempted murder. He was described by police Tuesday as a UN gang member.The arrests are the first in what police promise will be a series of gang busts in the next few weeks.
There have been 22 targeted shootings in the Lower Mainland since Jan. 20.Though no one was killed in the Feb. 16 incident, police called it a "significant shooting," and a targeted attack on an associate of the Bacon brothers, notorious B.C. gangsters who are associated with the rival Red Scorpions gang.Less than 12 hours later, a few kilometres away, Nikki Alemy, 23, was shot dead in her Cadillac while her four-year-old son was in the back seat. Alemy's husband has links to the UN gang.Surrey RCMP investigators said the Feb. 16 shooting was part of a larger wave of gang violence across the region, as two violent mid-level groups, the UN gang and the Red Scorpions, fight for territory."The level of violence of these people is astounding," said Insp. Mike Porteous, team leader for the Vancouver police investigation into gang activity.He said police prevented at least 20 other planned attacks through their investigations, which include figuring out who's likely to be the next target of gang violence, then working to thwart it.Supt. Dan Malo, officer in charge of the Integrated Gang Task Force, said Tilli-Choli's arrest will have a significant effect on the UN gang. Tilli-Choli took over the leadership role with the organization after former leader Clay Roueche was arrested in the U.S. for drug smuggling. Roueche is in jail in Seattle awaiting his trial date.
Tilli-Choli, Ali and Cottrell will remain in jail awaiting their bail hearing scheduled for March 10.
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