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Hey, it's Nancy. Before we begin today, I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. January 1st, 2009 was a particularly cold day in Calgary, with temperatures dipping to minus 30 degrees Celsius. The Bolsa Vietnamese restaurant was open for customers wanting to celebrate the start of a new year.
Just before 4 that afternoon, chaos broke out. Two masked gunmen entered the restaurant and opened fire. Three people were killed in the hail of bullets. He was a complete innocent victim. Wrong place, wrong time. He didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve to be treated like that, to be chased down and to go through his last moments that way.
I'm Nancy Hixt, a senior crime reporter for Global News. Today on Crime Beat, I share the story of a group of friends who turned on each other, unleashing deadly consequences which turned into an all-out war. This is The Crossfire. To write this episode, I went back through the archives of several decades of work for Global News. I found dozens of stories.
In fact, I've likely done more stories on this case than any other in my entire career. I remember covering the arrests and court appearances of key players in the case, only to end up reporting on their murders.
We knew if somebody got shot or murdered, we knew there was going to be another shooting within the next 12, 24 hours. That's Mike Schutt, a veteran detective with the Calgary Police Homicide Unit. I introduced you to him in Season 4 of Crime Beat.
He's an officer with extensive experience in forensic interviews, crisis negotiations, and he's also a longtime gang investigator. And this case has consumed a large part of his career. This isn't a $40 work week. This is...
Seven days a week and significant hours all day into the nights. It's quite a bit. But I think as a police officer, you know, when we're able to go back and solve some of the most difficult homicides or have an impact on that, it's what's your legacy? As a cop, I look at it and I say, what is your legacy? And for me, working with gangs and organized crime and having the impact on one group became what my legacy is.
The fatal shooting that I described at the start of this episode was the result of a feud that began nearly a decade earlier. You probably go back into '98, '99. At that point in time, both these groups were one cohesive group of individuals, a group of males that were involved in small-time drug dealing.
A lot of the guys knew each other from high school or either went to the same school together or they were in the same community area, growing up in the same area. So they were at one point mostly friends. But in the early 2000s, that group of friends had a falling out. All the information I had was the main cause of the rift was imbalance in who was distributing and who was running the small drug networks that they were involved in. That was the main key. But there was other
Incidental things that occurred, there was incidents over a girlfriend that we heard that one guy was dating a girl and the next guy ended up dating the same girl and there was some animosity because of that.
Basically, as juveniles, the "whose side are you on, you with me, you with them" type thing. And it became more of a division in this group. And then as they interacted, there was the assaults and, you know, one-on-one fights and turned into more group fights. And that had led into now fights with baseball bats and machete attacks. Things escalated very quickly. Here's the Staff Sergeant of the Calgary Police Homicide Unit, Sean Gregson.
Kind of came to a head back in February of 2002 when two groups were out of the bar celebrating a birthday and Adam Mouy was there with his brother at a karaoke bar downtown. And there's bad feelings between these groups. A fight breaks out outside of the bar. Adam's stabbed, his brother's injured. In the end of this whole altercation, Adam ends up dying here.
Then, just months after that first homicide, in the midst of Christmas shoppers, shots were fired at a busy Calgary mall. According to court documents, this shooting precipitated the complete split of the group into two rival gangs. Here again is Detective Shoot. Nobody really knows where the names came from.
There is nobody that could specifically say that this individual or this group created that name. Nobody really seems to know. It just kind of
morphed into the names and they were recognized as the Fresh Off the Boat, which essentially is newcomers to Canada, fresh off the boat meaning a transport vessel bringing immigrants. It was my understanding of where it came from. And then it became the Fresh Off the Boat Killers when there was a division between the groups.
Given both groups were involved in illicit activity, they became well-known in the court system. Brian Holtby is a senior Crown prosecutor with Alberta Justice. He's been a lawyer for more than 43 years. He prosecuted gang members from both groups for drug offenses and then became heavily involved in organized crime prosecutions.
It did start off as fresh off the boat. As time went on, members of the FOB didn't really like that name, so they began to call themselves Forever Our Brothers for FOB. But I always called them the FOB and the FK just as a shorthand.
Investigators said after that first homicide at the karaoke bar and the split into the FOB and FK, there was instant animosity, violence and an all-out war. When this war took place, it was something that really we had not seen before in Calgary.
Detective Mike Schuette said both sides were out for blood. And there was the drive-by shootings, which ultimately escalated into human hunting.
Police said they found hit lists, complete with names and faces. And on the streets of Calgary, there were a series of very public executions. And these weren't confined to one specific neighborhood. These murders happened day or night across Calgary, from residential streets in the suburbs, to strip malls, to busy intersections and alleys.
Staff Sergeant Gregson said it was unpredictable and extremely dangerous. These shootings are occurring in downtown locations where people are busy. They're occurring in people's front yards. They're occurring in the middle of the streets with other cars and families and at gas stations where witnesses have children in the backseat of their cars.
And in the crossfire, investigators said the gunman didn't always hit the intended targets. Police said Soforn Kim, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in June of 2005, was not a known gang member. Just days later, his sister, MB Kim, spoke to reporters at police headquarters. He was just there at the wrong time, wrong place at the wrong time, and he was innocent for sure.
Police said he was a passenger in the SUV that was hit by at least a dozen bullets. Just a couple of my friends called me because he wasn't answering his phone. I went down because I heard there was another drive-by shooting because my friend drove by and it was a CRV and I'd known that his friend drove a CRV. So I went down and that's how I found out.
No idea. I don't understand why this would happen to him. He was the sweetest guy you could ever meet. He was always there for me, no matter what it was. It's been nearly 20 years since her brother was killed, and his homicide remains unsolved. Just over a month after Soforn Kim was killed, there was another shooting. This one was a double homicide in July of 2005.
Detective Schuette said as police tried to anticipate their next moves, the gang members were out looking for opportunities to kill. That became their full-time role was to locate and shoot and murder individuals. And it was very much, you kill my friend, I'm going to go kill your friend.
Within the first five years, a dozen gang members were murdered. Funerals were held for each of them, many buried side by side in a cemetery on the outskirts of Calgary.
There was a heavy police presence at each memorial. The risk of violence was high, even towards the media. I was threatened several times just for doing my job and covering these stories. Families would like you to leave. If you're shot, tough. They're threatening to shoot us? You betcha.
The funerals also gave police a chance to track down wanted gang members. One member of the FK was arrested at a funeral I was assigned to cover. Prosecutor Brian Holtby remembers this particular case. The man was ordered to be deported in 2004 for serious criminal behavior. A fellow by the name of Jackie Tran, who was an early senior figure,
in the group. He was deported to Vietnam after years and years of immigration proceedings. I attended those hearings, and I was at the airport when he was deported in March of 2010. Are you going to try to come back? Yeah.
I've always wondered if he managed to sneak back into Canada. He has seemingly disappeared without a trace, though sources told me they believe he remained in Vietnam. In the meantime, back in 2005, the deadly battle on the streets of Calgary continued. Detective Mike Schuette said they used every possible method to disrupt the gang war and stop the violence,
But it was a challenge. It became maybe a race against time for the police to try to suppress the crime as we know that they're happening, as well as trying to actively work on the investigations from a multitude of angles, whether it's drug trafficking, gun trafficking, breaches, new conditions.
These two groups, they were sophisticated in some ways in that not only were they involved in the drug trade, but they also had access to lots of weapons. They were hiding weapons in secret compartments and all kinds of other things that they were doing to try to defeat law enforcement. That's Superintendent Cliff O'Brien, another veteran Calgary police officer,
He investigated these gangs early on in his career, from a street constable through as a detective in homicide and up through the ranks to superintendent. He said major players were arrested for drug or weapons offenses, only to be released on bail soon after.
I recall covering many of these gang members through the courts. There was one man in particular who was in and out of jail. Then, one day, as I was reporting from the scene of yet another homicide, I discovered he was the latest victim. It was very frustrating. It was very frustrating because we were looking to...
The people that we knew were responsible for these shootings, we would go to their families and plead with them to please help us because your loved one is going to either go to jail because they will have killed somebody or they themselves will be killed. And there were multiple times that we would do duty to warrants to individual families and we would go back months later with the news that your loved one is dead.
And each murder only sparked more violence as each opposing side sought retribution in a deadly back and forth. As tensions between the FOB and FK gangs escalated, the brazen murders continued. More gangsters were gunned down in broad daylight. By 2007, the death toll grew to 13. And again, police struggled to keep up.
Superintendent O'Brien said concern was growing that innocent bystanders would get caught in the crossfire. You could be walking your children on the street. You could be sitting in a restaurant, which happened, and you could be near, beside, behind, just walking in. And there's a shooting that takes place as one group tries to target somebody from another group. But again,
you could be injured or your family could be injured. So it became a very high priority for us to not only suppress the shootings and the activity that was going on, but also try to identify who's responsible and put them in jail. You don't want to be telling the community that it's unsafe to be here. This is our community, it should be safe. But because of these two groups and their actions of those people, it wasn't safe. And it was very, very frustrating because we were struggling to get a handle on it.
And then the worst fear came true. Here's Homicide Staff Sergeant Sean Gregson. This was on October of 2008. Again, it's a typical night out where people are out celebrating a birthday and go out for the evening with friends.
And after they're at the bar, a group of people decide that they're going to go get something to eat. So the group travels up to the Food Inn East restaurant. It's after hours. The restaurant is actually locked from the inside so that the patrons can finish their meals in there. A typical night out with friends and all of a sudden two people come into the restaurant with guns. Numerous shots are fired at this table.
resulting in two people dying, two additional people being injured, one with life-altering injuries. The investigation revealed that members of the FOB thought a member of the FK was in the restaurant. But Detective Schuette said it's believed the FOB got wrong information and innocent people died, including Tina Kong and Kevin Sess.
She should not have been a victim of a crime and no more should have, Kevin. It was suspected that they had some
associations or some relationship with the FK side, but there was nothing concrete, nothing confirmed. Tina was a nursing student that happened to be out celebrating with some friends that night as well. It was a spotter who had identified a table of individuals that they believed were associated to the rival group that placed a phone call for that crime to happen that night. Both Tina and Kevin were friends with Sarath Kuhn. Well, Kevin was just...
I've met Sarath a few times now. These gangs have changed his life in every way possible.
Sarath was there the night his friends were killed. He was also caught in the crossfire. We remember some guys walking into a restaurant and as soon as we saw the gun, it just started shooting. That's when everything just started going blank, you know. You didn't know what was going on. It wasn't too much pain to actually remember a lot of stuff. So, I don't know, it was kind of hard to think back what really happened that night, you know.
I think it was after they induced you into a coma, you kind of lose some of your memories. They all hit me on the side and one of them, he mentioned, well, one of them hit one of my spines, so I became an L1 paraplegic. From then on, you know, you have to adjust to your living situation. You gotta change a lot of stuff, you know, and things are different when you're in a wheelchair, right?
Alongside the physical challenges are lifelong emotional scars. It's just thinking about it, you know, just losing your friends. Sadly, they weren't the last victims of the collateral damage. Which brings us back to where I started this episode at the Bolsa restaurant on January 1st, 2009.
That's when Samoan-Canadian Kenny Sua braved the bitter cold and went out to eat to celebrate the start of a new year. The first restaurant he went to was closed, so Sua headed to the Bolsa Vietnamese restaurant in southeast Calgary. Sua was sitting alone eating his meal when gunmen entered the restaurant. Staff Sergeant Gregson describes what happened next.
This is January 1st, New Year's Day, just after 3:30 in the afternoon at a busy mall, a strip mall, when people are out still celebrating the holidays, grabbing some food, and two people again enter a restaurant, firing rounds at a table where two people are shot inside. And again, a lot of unrelated people in the restaurant.
panicking and fleeing. And again, here's a situation where somebody just trying to be safe, running out of the restaurant, again gets shot and another innocent person is killed. Their target was an opposing gang member named Sanjeev Mann, who was sitting at a booth with an associate named Aaron Bendel, who was also killed.
Kenny Sua tried to flee the gunfire. He was shot and killed by a third gunman who was waiting outside the restaurant. I remember that day so clearly. I was on my way out at the end of my shift, and as I walked out of the newsroom, I heard details of the deadly shooting unfolding on our police scanner.
Instead of going home, I hopped into a news vehicle with my photographer and raced to the address. When I arrived at the scene, I started gathering details of the deadly shooting. It wasn't long before I learned a completely innocent bystander had been shot and killed.
Kenny Sua was originally from Samoa and became a Canadian citizen five years earlier in 2004. And he was just weeks away from surprising his brothers with a visit back home. His entire family are devastated. Anyway.
I just really feel for them, you know, because they're not here to look out, you know, to look out for him and to remember him. And it's like a foreign country and his parents have been here twice, so they know Canada, but it's supposed to be a safe place and they probably thought their son was safe.
That's Lenny Folden, Kenny Sua's ex-wife. They met through missionary work, which is what first brought him to Canada. She told me they were married for 10 years and remained close friends following their divorce. He always had faith in me and my abilities, even though I didn't have faith in myself sometimes. And he's the one who encouraged me to go back to school and get my education.
And now I'm in second year medical school and it's because of him that I'm there. A memorial service was held in the days following his murder. I have realized the power and the freedom that comes with forgiveness. Until we meet again, bro, Mote and Bamboyage, rest in peace.
While Sua's family offered forgiveness to his killers, his murder sparked outrage in the city. And police needed to find a way to end the violence once and for all. We needed to do something different, and I think we needed to do something radical.
That's next time on Crime Beat. Thank you for joining me this week. Crime Beat is written and produced by me, Nancy Hixt, with producer Dila Velasquez. Audio editing and sound design is by Rob Johnston. Special thanks to photographer-editor Danny Lantella for his work on this episode. And thanks to Chris Bassett, the VP of Network Content, Production and Distribution and Editorial Standards for Global News.
I would love to have you tell a friend about this podcast, and you can help me share these important stories by rating and reviewing Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. You can find me on Twitter at Nancy Hixt, on Facebook at Nancy Hixt Crime Beat, and on Instagram at nancy.hixt. That's N-A-N-C-Y dot H-I-X-T. Thanks again for listening. Please join me next time.