A former North Vancouver man has been sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 18 years after pleading guilty in a Kelowna courtroom this week to second degree murder of Jonathan Bacon and the attempted murder of four other people in a brazen daytime shooting.
Jason Thomas McBride was handed the sentence by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Allan Betton after admitting that he was responsible for opening fire at people inside a white Porsche Cayenne, parked at the entrance of a downtown Kelowna hotel on Oct. 14, 2011.
He will also serve a concurrent 15-year sentence for the attempted murders. McBride will get credit for time spent in custody since his arrest five years ago.
Bacon, a notorious Red Scorpions gangster, was killed in the shooting.
Leah Hadden-Watts, who was in the car with Bacon, was left a paraplegic by the shooting. Larry Amero, a Hells Angel, James Riach, a member of the Independent Soldiers gang, and Lyndsey Black also narrowly avoided being killed in the shooting.
McBride was originally arrested and charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in 2013, along with Michael Kerry Hunter Jones of Gibsons and Jujhar Khun-Khun of Surrey.
At the time, police had been under pressure to make arrests in the case, which formed part of what the head of the RCMP’s combined forces unit described then as a “cascade of violence” of retaliatory shootings among gang members.
Police pointed to the murder of Gurmit Dhak in Burnaby in October 2010 as the “flashpoint” for the violence that continued with the Bacon murder.
The arrests followed 18 months of investigation and the execution of six simultaneous search warrants.
On April 19, Crown prosecutors amended the charges against all three men, who subsequently entered guilty pleas.
Jones and Khun-Khun both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and were sentenced to 18 years in prison. With credit for time served, they will serve sentences of 10 years.
Assistant Commissioner Kevin Hackett, chief officer of the RCMP’s combined special forces unit, this week described the investigation as “extremely large and complex.”
“Today will hopefully bring some comfort to the community and all of those adversely impacted by the violence that took place on that summer day in 2011,” he said.
