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Latest Vancouver gang shooting, recent Eaton Centre killings show risk to public safety

A lot gets written about the differences between Toronto and Vancouver gangs but Monday afternoon's shooting death of a well-known Vancouver gangster points out the one thing they have in common: Human life, their own and ours, means nothing.

Vancouver police confirmed Tuesday that 34-year-old Randynesh (Randy) Raman Naicker, founder of the Independent Soldiers gang, was the man gunned down in a parking lot outside a suburban Starbucks on Monday.

Naicker was shot beside his car by a masked gunman who then fled in another vehicle, the Vancouver Sun reported.

It was the second gang shooting in a month in Port Moody, a pleasant municipality on the eastern end of Burrard Inlet, leading its small police force to hand over the investigation to Vancouver's gang squad.

Naicker, a convicted kidnapper, was targeted in 2009 while living at a halfway house near downtown Vancouver. He'd been logged out for a trip to the store but the staff member mistakenly wrote down his name instead of another resident who'd gone out. That man, Raj Soomel, was gunned down as he strolled down the street, the Sun noted.

Vancouver's gang task force had warned Naicker recently that he was in danger but he ignored the threats.

Sun crime reporter Kim Bolan reported the first attempted hit on Naicker originated with the rival United Nations gang after two of Naicker's Independent Soldiers assaulted a UN member in prison.

Bolan also wrote in her Real Scoop blog that Naicker was close to some brothers who'd exchanged hostile words with gangster Bin Toor before he was gunned down in Port Moody on May 31.

"A friend of Naicker's, who has known him over the last year, contacted me by email tonight (Monday) to say that he really believed Naicker was no longer criminally connected and trying to change his life around," Bolan wrote. "If that is true, it makes the deadly shooting all the more tragic."

But insults, acts of disrespect and turf challenges aren't tolerated. Bygones generally aren't bygones.

Gang killings dominate the Sun's interactive Google map of dozens of murders in the Vancouver area over the last three years.

Victims were often targeted in public places, such as restaurants and night clubs where bystanders are at risk.

Last January, gangster Sandip Duhre was shot while dining at downtown Vancouver's posh Wall Centre hotel restaurant as the visiting U.S. women's soccer team was gathered in the nearby lobby, CBC News reported at the time.

Toronto experienced one of the worst incidents recently when a reputed gangster fired several shots in an Eaton Centre food court, killing two members of his own gang supposedly in revenge for a previous assault.

[Related: Eaton Centre shooting sparks debate over bail]

The shooter also wounded five other people, including a 13-year-old boy who was hit in the head. He now wears a helmet because a piece of his skull has been removed temporarily while he awaits surgery to remove the remaining bullet fragments, the Toronto Star reported.

The Boxing Day 2006 shooting of 15-year-old Jane Creba outside the Eaton Centre when rival gang members clashed on crowded Yonge Street sparked a debate over how to crack down on gangsters who resort to guns to publicly settle disputes.