Accused enter not guilty pleas at Surrey Six murder trial

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The three men standing trial in the shooting death of six people have plead not guilty.

People lined up for at least an hour before start-time and security is high at BC Supreme Court.

Eileen Mohan’s son Chris was only 22-years-old when he and five others were shot dead in a Surrey high rise in 2007 and Monday three of the men charged with his murder are in court.

She has waited six years to watch the men accused of killing her son stand before a judge, and now the wait is finally over for a heartbroken mother.

Matthew Johnston, Cory Haevischer and Quang Vinh Thang (Michael) Le will appear before a judge in BC Supreme Court in Vancouver this morning.

“I have been saving my vacation days for the last five years and I am so grateful to my employers who have allowed me to do this because I could not take leave without pay,” Eileen Mohan tells News1130.  “I’m on my own and I’ve had to do things to ensure that I can go to work and still go to court and represent my son.”

The BC Civil Liberties Association says the attention this case has brought is a perfect example of why cameras should be allowed in the courtroom.

“There isn’t very much access to the open court if you have to be present there in person, not to mention your job, but of course your geographic location is going to mitigate against that as well,” says the BCCLA’s Michael Vonn.

Vonn says you have a right to know what’s going on in court but questions why you have to be in the gallery to get that information. “Certainly there are cases that capture the public’s attention. In those cases, in particular, you want the press to be able to fulfill the role of intermediary, giving some insight into the process.”

Four of the victims – 22-year-old Edward Narong, 21-year-old Corey Lal, his 26-year-old brother Michael Lal, and 19-year-old Ryan Bartolomeo – were known to police but Mohan and 55-year-old Ed Schellenberg didn’t have any links to drugs or gangs.

Mohan lived in the building and was simply in the wrong place when the killers arrived.  Schellenberg was a gasfitter who was working in the apartment at the time.

A full year has been set aside for the trial and Mohan knows it will be gruelling for her emotionally.

“My son was delivered to me in a casket,” she says.

“He was frozen, cut open and sewed back together.  He was shot.  That changed me and that changed me to the fact that I wanted to find out what happened to him.”

Another man has already pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the case.  Accused gangster Jamie Bacon will be tried separately at a later date.

A Long time to wait

It’s uncommon for a case to take this long to trial, but defence lawyer Marvin Stern says this is no ordinary case.

Stern says the Crown and defence have had to sift through mounds of evidence to prepare their arguments.

“They have been involved in pre-trial applications, which are quite complicated both legally and factually, for a significant period of time,” says Stern.  “When the investigation is so large and complex, it does take a significant period of time for counsel to receive all the information, analyze the information and then be able to proceed further.”

Stern expects the defence will try to raise questions about the credibility of the Crown’s witnesses.

“It’s my understanding a lot of the evidence will be coming from people who were involved in the criminal scene back at that time,” he says.  “That means probably people who had criminal records at the time of the murder.”

Police have claimed for years that Jamie Bacon and his brothers Jonathan and Jarrod were high-ranking members of the Red Scorpions gang.

Jonathan Bacon was gunned down outside a hotel in Kelowna back in 2011.  Jarrod Bacon is serving a 14-year prison sentence for plotting to import a hundred kilograms of cocaine into Canada.

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