WOMEN JOIN HIT LISTS IN GANG WARS

Since Feb. 3 Four Females With Links To Gang Activity Have Been
Targeted, Gunned Down

In a year that has seen a maelstrom of targeted shootings in B.C.,
the code of "no women, no children" seems to no longer abide.

Since Feb. 3, four women with links to gang activity have been gunned
down in targeted hits, an anomaly in the Lower Mainland's
male-dominated gangland violence.

"We haven't seen this very often; we certainly can say we've seen an
increase in the number of women which appear to be targeted," said
Cpl. Dale Carr, spokesman for the Integrated Homicide Investigation
Team. "This indicates that women are not exempt from being tar-
geted." First there was Brianna Kinnear, then Nikki Alemy, then Laura
Lamoureux and last week Betty Yan. All four had links to either drug
or gang activity. All four were gunned down in targeted shootings.

The murders seem anomalous, said gang expert Michael Chettleburgh,
because we haven't heard much of this before. "We are going to see
more of [these targeted hits] in the future because more women are
getting involved in the game," he said.

That wasn't the case 15 years ago, when veteran gangsters upheld
common street rules best documented by rapper Tupac's "Code of Thug
Life." New gangsters don't subscribe to this code, said Chettleburgh,
because "anyone's fair game" -- women included.

While less than 10 per cent of gang members in Canada are women, they
still have roles in criminal activity.

Gang members' girlfriends may often work in the underground sex trade
as exotic dancers or escorts.

"They need to produce for the gang if they're going to be in the
game," said Chettleburgh. These areas also open up new routes and
customers for drug trafficking, he added.

Females are also deployed in traditional jobs such as tax bureaus,
banks and real-estate agencies for information-gathering purposes.
These roles enable other types of crime, including mortgage and
credit-card fraud.

They may also carry, hold and transport drugs, as they are generally
less likely to draw attention from the police and border guards.
Chettleburgh added that women are less likely to sell on the street
because of fear of violent rip-offs and bad deals. That hasn't
necessarily been the case in B.C.

Police allege both Kinnear and Lamoureux were involved in the
street-level drug trade, while friends of Ryan Richards, a
19-year-old man gunned down in Abbotsford on March 31, told The
Province he ran a drug line with a female.

Women may also be used to infiltrate rival gangs to gather
information to intimidate witnesses or they may lure rivals into
dangerous situations or places.

"We are just starting to understand the level of involvement of
women," said Chettleburgh. "But they have always been there." He said
it wouldn't be unlikely to hear of more women involved in the
business of gangs being killed in the crossfire.

"If you've chosen that lifestyle, you've also chosen that risk," he
said. "You can expect at some point you may be in the path of a
bullet." kmercer@theprovince.com

The unspoken rules of "no women, no children" disappeared -- if they
ever existed -- when Nikki Alemy was murdered.

On Feb. 16, two days after she celebrated her 23rd birthday, the
young mother was murdered in front of her horrified four-year-old son.

Alemy was driving her husband's car down a quiet, sunny street in
Surrey not far from where she grew up when the driver's-side window
was shot out in a drive-by.

A passing motorist, who narrowly avoided the car as it drifted into
the oncoming lane, gently steered it off the road. Other motorists
tried to calm the child while a doctor who was passing by tended to Alemy.

Her six-year-old daughter was not in the car at the time.

Alemy's husband, Koshan Alemy, is allegedly connected to the UN Gang.
He was charged alongside another man in 2007 for numerous
weapons-related offences. The charges were eventually stayed in March 2008.

Police said Koshan Alemy was co-operating in the investigation. No
new information has been released since.

Laura Lynne Lamoureux never made it home.

The 36-year-old had e-mailed her mother in Ontario several hours
before her body was found alongside a Langley road on March 14.

"She e-mailed me that night at 10 p.m. saying she was coming home,
she didn't say for how long," her mother Barbara Lamoureux told The
Province from her Trenton, Ont., home.

"But she was killed at 5 a.m. the next morning."

Police said the 36-year-old's death was linked to the street-level,
drug-trafficking trade. Her criminal record included charges of
weapons possession, break-and-enter and possession of stolen
property, but no drug-related charges.

Lamoureux's mother said that while her daughter did have a record, it
was exaggerated after her death.

"We were always there for her," she said. "She was a loving, loving
girl. It was very hard for her to accept friends but once she did she
valued them for life."

Lamoureux's first love was her horses. She was an equestrian jumper
since the age of 10 and had owned horses growing up in Ontario and
initially when she moved to B.C. 12 years ago.

It came as no surprise to many when Betty Yan, a.k.a. "Big Sister"
Betty, was killed.

Police found the mother of three shot to death in the driver's seat
of her grey Mercedes in Richmond on April 15.

Yan had slipped into Canada as a refugee via Bangkok, Thailand, in
1969 and quickly became involved in Asian organized-crime groups. But
she played both sides by working with police investigators, offering
them information on triads.

She was present when loan shark "Pretty Boy" Meng was fatally shot in
a Richmond restaurant in 1988. Yan was also considered a person of
interest in the murder investigation of Tommy Wong, who was killed
during a Richmond home invasion in 2002.

Her links to the criminal underworld didn't stop there. Yan also was
a known associate of loan shark Kwok Chung Tam and was one of the
first people in the country to align herself with China's most wanted
man, Lai Changxing.

Yan had a reputation for running a violent and ruthless loan-sharking
operation. She was known for taking citizenship cards as collateral
when her victims failed to pay their interest.

Brianna Helen Kinnear had her life snuffed out before it barely began.

On Feb. 3, the 21-year-old was found slumped over the steering wheel
of a friend's pickup on a Coquitlam street.

She was only five weeks into an eight-month conditional sentence for
trafficking cocaine, pot and oxycodine. Her co-accused were her best
friend Tiffany Bryan and her boyfriend Jesse Margison.

A source told The Province that Bryan was working a drug line
operated by Margison, who was arrested in February in connection with
a December 2006 incident where cash and drugs were stolen followed by
the July 2007 forcible confinement and mutilation of a Metro Vancouver man.

Weeks after the devastating loss of Kinnear, Bryan made a plea on an
online memorial for the killings to stop.

Unfortunately, Kinnear doesn't seem to be the first victim in her
crew. The group has a reputation for violently ripping off other
dial-a-dope operations, which may be prompting the series of
slayings. Three others believed to be linked to the crew have also
been killed in targeted shootings, and Margison survived multiple
gunshots himself in December 2007.