Julian Sher.com

VANCOUVER - Lois Schellenberg has a tragic sensitivity to the fear rippling around the Lower Mainland region as each new day brings word of yet another gang-related shooting.

Since early February, bullets have been flying in supermarket parking lots, streets, homes and elsewhere. There have been nine shootings in all, leading to the deaths of five people.

"It's very disconcerting, isn't it, to have this going on around you," Mrs. Schellenberg said Friday in a rare interview.

"You don't know where you should go. You don't want to not go out any more for fear of being shot at, but it almost feels that way. It could be at a gas station or picking up groceries that some looney tune [is] out there with an automatic rifle and deciding to take matters into his own hands.

The latest wave of victims has been linked to the gang life, but Mrs. Schellenberg and her family are living with the reality that gang violence can strike innocent bystanders.

Ed Schellenberg, her husband of 29 years, was one of two bystanders killed on Oct. 19, 2007, in a Surrey apartment building. Four men with criminal links were also gunned down in the 15th-floor apartment.

Mr. Schellenberg was 55 when he died. The veteran fireplace repairman was in the building on service calls for the company he launched with his brother-in-law, Steve Brown.

The other innocent victim was 22-year-old Chris Mohan, who lived with his family across the hall from the unit where the killings occurred.

It added up to the most devastating incident of gang violence in recent B.C. history, a tragedy that prompted a massive investigation by members of the Integrated Homicide Team, which handles homicides outside of Vancouver, West Vancouver and Delta. The probe continues to this day, but has yet to lead to any arrests.

Mrs. Schellenberg says her husband, whom she met when she was a lifeguard at a children's camp in Hope, B.C., and he was a maintenance man, has become a "poster boy" on the gangs issue. That's good, she says, because people have to be reminded of the costs of gang violence.

But it hits close to home when his name comes up in the media, especially as it relates to the details of how he died. Police have been discreet, but Mr. Schellenberg and the others were executed in the apartment across the street from a Surrey SkyTrain station.

"I can't imagine the day, being there," Mrs. Schellenberg says, her voice catching and thick with emotion. "That's just … holy cow. Like did he see it coming or any of that kind of stuff? It's just … wow. It's pretty close to the surface still."

She will never forget the moment the police came to her door, the day after the killings, to tell her what happened.

"That was like, 'I don't think I want to let you in, but' … the thing you dread the most, and there they were, at your door," she recalls, her voice trailing off.

She is thankful for one last chance, something very routine, she had on the last day of her husband's life. He had driven their son and daughter to their places of work.

"Where I was working, he popped in, just to say, 'You'll need to pick the kids up after work because I have dropped them off.' And then he went to work, so it was like we had our own time, brief as it was.

"I mean he just popped in to say that, but that was the last time we saw him. It was kind of good, I guess."

There has been a long list of gang-violence incidents since then. Mrs. Schellenberg, a 51-year-old bookkeeper in Abbotsford, B.C., doesn't scour the media for details, but is mindful of them, especially in the last week.

"It's out of control. It's shocking and it isn't," she says. "These guys are everywhere doing their own thing. It's basically out of control. They just have their agenda to look after their own people."

Montreal-based gang expert Julian Sher, offering an outsider's perspective on the B.C. situation, says it appears there is a vicious battle among younger, particularly aggressive street gangs. The best hope for residents, he says, is that police have launched infiltration and undercover efforts they are not prepared to talk about.

"There are not 10 ways to take down gangs. There is only one. Intelligence and infiltration," he says.

"What measures were taken two or three years ago, we don't know. What we know is unless police are given the resources, the laws, the leverage and leeway to do massive intelligence and infiltration gathering, unless they're doing it now to see the results in the next few weeks and months, the gang situation is only going to get worse."

IHIT said 24-year-old Jonathan Barber was shot dead in May, apparently because someone mistook him for a member of a family which has been linked to gang activity.

On May 9, Mr. Barber was behind the wheel of an SUV he had taken delivery of to install electronics in it. It was all legal. Driving in Burnaby, he was strafed with gunfire by the occupants of a passing vehicle and killed. His 17-year-old girlfriend, driving behind him, was also injured in the attack.

"Where does it stop? [Gang members] have killed innocents," said Corporal Dale Carr, a homicide team spokesman. "We're lucky in the latest spate of shots fired that no one has been hurt."

Mrs. Schellenberg says, based on current and past events, that it appears innocent people are of no concern to gang members. Oddly enough, she says she isn't angry at what happened to her husband.

"I don't walk around in an angry state. It makes me crazy. I don't know if that's the same as angry," she says.

Mrs. Schellenberg, whose family have been members of the Immanuel Fellowship Baptist Church in Abbotsford, says faith has helped her cope.

"God is in charge. He knows what happened. He did this for a reason. We have no idea what it is at this point, but one day we will be asking him, 'What were you thinking man?'" She chuckles sadly.

Steve Brown, Mr. Schellenberg's brother-in-law, has been an outspoken advocate for effective new policies to deal with gangs; the public face of a family that remains in grieving.

Mr. Brown has recently been promising to launch a campaign for the firing of B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal if he cannot come up with policies to end the gang violence within 30 days. The clock began ticking on Feb. 7.

"The escalation of violence in this gang turf war is just more madness really. It's one thing to have Ed murdered and we're obviously concerned there has been no justice for Ed, but we're also very concerned there has been no changes in the way government administers justice in B.C.," says Mr. Brown, a proponent of tighter bail policies against suspected gang members.

Mrs. Schellenberg supports the same proposals as Mr. Brown, but is skeptical about a final victory over the gangs, suggesting they will always be replaced by up and comers. "I don't think this ever goes away, but it needs to be controlled and put a damper on."

She is eager for arrests, to a point. "I can be as patient as I need to be. Nothing is changing the outcome in my family. I want the police to have a case that is impenetrable, the defence can't get in there and grab a little piece of string and wiggle and wiggle," she says.

"I think, for the most part, the pieces are all in place. Maybe the picture isn't quite as clear as it needs to be, but I think the puzzle is well under way if not complete."

Cpl. Carr says drug and organized-crime homicides have occupied about 40 per cent of the integrated homicide team's file since the unit was created in 2003. It has a clearance rate of about 30 per cent, compared to 88 per cent for domestic homicides.

The Surrey case, which investigators call the "Surrey Six," remains a high priority, Cpl. Carr says. "It is an investigation that is one of the IHIT's biggest priorities. It has got a great deal of resources committed to it. It's going to take some additional time."

Mrs. Schellenberg says her husband would have been amazed by the whole enduring situation that has spun out of the events around his death.

"He would have sat back and thought about it for a minute and shook his head. He was sort of an under-the-radar kind of guy," she says.

"The whole thing is not the way he lived his life. That's for sure. He would be pretty amazed and pretty proud of the way people have stepped up, and our family and friends, the support they have given us as a family and the love."

show

'It's out of control'