VANCOUVER — Red Scorpion gangster Kevin LeClair once told police investigating the Surrey Six murders that victim Corey Lal was “begging for his life” before he was shot.
LeClair, who was gunned down himself in February 2009, had been talking to police about the Oct. 19, 2007 slaughter of Lal and five others in Surrey’s Balmoral Tower, B.C. Supreme Court heard Tuesday.
Part of LeClair’s statement to police was read by defence lawyer Simon Buck at the murder trial of his client Cody Haevischer and co-accused Matt Johnston.
“I was told they rushed in, got everybody on the ground. I was told two different stories. But that Corey was like really upset and crying, like begging for his life, saying he’ll do anything,” LeClair said.
Lal’s mother broke down in court when she learned what might have happened in her son’s final minutes.
LeClair also said he heard that victim Eddie Narong challenged his killers, saying, “F--- you, you’re f---ing dead” before a man who can only be identified as Person X, “shot him in the head.”
Two members of the rival United Nations gang have been charged in LeClair’s murder.
But details of his cooperation with police investigating his own Red Scorpion gang were revealed for the first time publicly Tuesday.
Buck was cross-examining Haevischer’s former girlfriend for a third day, suggesting her statements to police about the murders were influenced by information shown to her, such as the LeClair statement.
But the woman, who can only be identified as KM due to a publication ban, disagreed, saying she told the police the truth based on what she knew about the day of the murders.
Buck also asked her about a statement she gave to police on April 16, 2009 with details from a “white board” conversation she had with slain gangster Jon Bacon a few days before.
In it, KM described to police how gas fireplace repairman Ed Schellenberg and neighbour Chris Mohan got caught in the slaughter.
She said she learned the killers “were going there to jack these guys up” and that they saw only four people in Balmoral suite 1505 at first.
“And then somebody saw Ed Schellenberg was hiding … somewhere and scared for his life. So they brought him out and put him with the other guys all facing one way so they weren’t looking at the guys,” KM said in the statement.
She said the killers heard Mohan in the hallway outside the apartment.
“And Matt grabbed him and threw him in, and he’s like ‘I’m not a part of it. I don’t know these guys. I’m not their friend.’ It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” KM said.
Buck said KM made up her evidence to police to “save her own skin” and to get back at Haevischer because he had a new girlfriend.
He read a transcript of an April 2009 call KM made to the new girlfriend, in which KM said: “I’m his f---ing girlfriend, b----, and you’re the reason he’s going to jail.”
KM said she was angry after police played a call between Haevischer and the new woman, but that she wasn’t testifying for revenge.
“I am here today because I am doing the right thing and telling the truth,” KM said.
The trial is adjourned until Thursday when Johnston’s lawyer Michael Tammen will cross-examine KM.
Haevischer and Johnston are charged with conspiracy to kill rival trafficker Corey Lal, as well as first-degree murder in the deaths of Lal, his brother Michael, and associates Narong and Ryan Bartolomeo, as well as bystanders Schellenberg and Mohan.
