Good morning. Wendy Cox in Vancouver here.
Vancouver’s drug war has been simmering for decades. It’s not the stuff of crime shows: There’s no red-vs-blue conflict, one gang against another. Instead, it’s a web of established gangs, upstarts, freelancers, interlopers. It’s exceedingly difficult – if probably impossible – to map out an organization chart and the police have stopped offering to try when reporters ask.
The violence and the “targeted shootings” have become part of the patter of morning radio news reports, warranting space on the inside pages of newspapers.
But then in December, the person targeted was 14 years old, someone who was “known to police,” as investigators have said. How does a 14-year-old gain enough enemies to warrant being the subject of a targeted hit? How does a 14-year-old become “known to police” when the youngest anyone can be charged in Canada under the Youth Criminal Justice Act is only two years younger, at age 12?
Reporters Ian Bailey and Mike Hager wanted to learn a bit more about Tequel Willis’s life and to add a human face to the gang violence that spiked over the fall: Five people linked to the drug trade have been gunned down since Dec. 27. The region’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team and the Vancouver Police Department, which handles its own murder investigations, have announced a total of 11 targeted homicides since September.
The pandemic is partly to blame for the spike in killings because global drug supply chains have been disrupted, police and drug experts say.
Tequel was gunned down after getting out of a cab on a residential street in Surrey. He was returning some keys to a friend when he was hit with eight bullets. The cab driver was not injured, but hasn’t been back at work since. The sedan from where the bullets were fired was found a short distance away, burned out.
To learn more about Tequel, Ian and Mike spoke to his family members and to a friend, and combed through the social media eulogies common after a young person dies. He was mourned as a loyal and generous presence, goofy and energetic. On Instagram, he had posted clips of his scooter tricks at the local skate park and photos of himself dirt biking. Then, he began chronicling his pursuit of designer clothes and money.
Two weeks before he was killed, he entered a local studio with a good friend to record his first rap track. On the song released online shortly after his death, he raps about the highs and lows of the drug trade and, along with his friend, asks “Should I turn into a big boss?” in the chorus.
His family has blamed racism and a failure on the part of the education system for his troubles.
As recently April, 2019, Tequel was living in the central Interior of the province with his father. That’s when a news story in the Williams Lake Tribune shows him smiling beside former Team Canada hockey star Delaney Collins during a floor hockey game for troubled students and their parents. After the game, Ms. Collins talked about the adversity she has faced in her own life.
“My name is Tequel Willis and I like how she did the speech,” the 12-year-old boy says in a video shot by the newspaper reporter.
IHIT has stated repeatedly that Tequel’s shooting “certainly was not a random killing,” and that the teen had a criminal past that is relevant to its efforts to find his killers. Frank Jang, the agency’s spokesperson, said in an interview that Tequel was “known to police.”
Sgt. Jang says investigators had been gaining “momentum” with interviews and helpful forensic evidence secured from the burned-out vehicle used in the hit. But, he said, the family is not co-operating, prompting police to obtain a warrant to enter the family home.
Sgt. Jang declined to comment on what police were looking for, but he noted that resorting to a warrant to enter the home of a victim’s family is “highly, highly, highly unusual.”
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here. This is a new project and we’ll be experimenting as we go, so let us know what you think.