4: Pleas in Bacon trial

Castanet is counting down the top stories of 2018.

We’ll count down to the year’s No. 1 story on Dec. 31 and publish the newsmaker on New Year’s Day.

Our No. 4 story of 2018 – Guilty pleas in the Bacon murder.

Almost seven years after a midday gang shooting rocked Kelowna, and after a year of delay-ridden trial, three of the people involved struck a plea deal with the Crown in 2018.

Just after noon on Aug. 14, 2011, a sunny summer Sunday, Jason McBride, Michael Jones, Jujhar Khun-Khun and Manjinder (Manny) Hairan sat in a parked Ford Explorer in the Prospera Place parking lot, facing the Delta Grand Hotel.

The group, connected with the Lower Mainland's Dhak Group gang, had learned Jonathan Bacon, of the Red Scorpions, James Riach of the Independent Soldiers, and Hells Angel Larry Amero had spent the weekend at the hotel.

The Dhak Group had been hunting them for months on the orders of Sukh Dhak, who believed the targets were responsible for the 2010 murder of his brother, Gurmit Dhak.

At 2:38 p.m., Bacon, Riach and Amero, along with two women who had been staying with them, left the hotel and hopped in Amero's white Porsche Cayenne SUV. As they got set to leave, the Explorer pulled up beside them and two men, dressed in black, hopped out and begin shooting.

Amero, behind the wheel of the Porsche, attempted to flee, but crashed into the side of the building, narrowly missing several innocent bystanders.

After shooting Bacon at point-blank range and again spraying the Porsche with bullets, the shooters fled.

Bacon did not survive the shooting, while Amero was seriously injured. One of the women in the Porsche, Leah Hadden-Watts, was shot in the neck, paralyzing her from the waist down, while the other, Lyndsey Black, was injured. Riach escaped the shooting unharmed.

The burned shell of the getaway vehicle was found later that day near Lake County, and one of the firearms used in the shooting was found in a bush three kilometres from the scene several months later.

Khun-Khun, McBride and Jones were arrested a year and a half later, and charged with first-degree murder and four counts of attempted murder. Hairan was killed in a shooting in Surrey just one month before the three arrests were made.

Despite charges being laid in 2013, the trial didn't begin until May 2017. But the delays didn't end once the trial began, the longest extending from the fall of 2017 into the spring of 2018.

On April 20, the Crown surprised those following the trial by announcing the three accused had struck a plea deal, bringing an end to the saga.

Jason McBride pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and attempted murder and was given a life sentence with no chance of parole for 18 years, while Khun-Khun and Jones pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, and were sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.

In explaining why they struck the plea deal, Crown prosecutor Dave Ruse pointed to the delays the trial faced, along with the Crown's reliance on “unsavoury witnesses.”

In his sentencing, Justice Allan Betton emphasized the danger the shooters posed to innocent bystanders.

“One 9-mm bullet went through the front window of the Kelowna Art Gallery located across the street. Two bullets ... went through the exterior wall of the hotel complex and into the interior space of a hair salon,” Betton said.

“That no one else was injured or killed, but for it being true, would seem unbelievable."

The police investigation of the 2011 shooting, described as “one of the largest and most complex in B.C.'s history,” cost $9 million, which doesn't include the cost of the prosecution.

Hadden-Watts, the woman left paralyzed in the shooting, has sued McBride, Jones and Khun-Khun. She has also named the Delta Hotel and Gateway Casinos in her suit, along with B.C.'s Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General which is liable for the actions of the RCMP. She claims the RCMP should have warned her of the dangers of associating with Bacon, Amero and Riach. A civil trial date has yet to be set.