North York bowling alley shooting that killed innocent bystander was product of gang war
Thanh Tien Ngo, 32, was killed alongside Ruma Amar, 29, at Playtime bowling alley Saturday night. Police believe Ngo was the intended target, while Amar, who was at the bowling alley with her husband and sister, was an innocent bystander who did not know Ngo.
Sources tell CTV Toronto Ngo was the son of 64-year-old Ngoc Ngo who was gunned down in the doorway of his Symington Dr. home in March 2014.
Following the murder of Ngoc Ngo, a gardener with no criminal record, then Homicide investigator Det. Sgt. Pauline Gray hinted that he may not have been the intended target.
"He opened the door of his home and was shot immediately," Gray said at the time. "I'm having difficulty coming to a place in my investigation where a 64-year-old man living in his home in his slippers is a threat."
A court document filed during the proceedings of a Toronto Police project targeting organized crime the following year shows that Thanh Ngo believed he was the intended target and that police believed the shooting was part of an ongoing tit-for-tat war between two downtown-based street gangs: Asian Assassinz and Chin Pac.
Thanh Ngo was believed to be a member of Chin Pac.
Regarding the murder of his father, the court document notes: "Thanh Ngo, the victim's son, was inside the home at the time of the shooting. He told (a police officer) that he understood he was the intended target."
The document also points out that bullet cartridge cases found at the scene match cartridges found at the scene of a non-fatal shooting targeting another Chin Pac member in 2013.
The apparent war between Asian Assassinz and Chin Pac has been going on for several years, but seemed to peak between 2013 and 2015, with people on both sides being hit by bullets. The court document describes a sophisticated operation on both sides that involved encrypted phones and GPS devices being placed on some of the victims' vehicles.
Included in the bloodshed between 2013 and 2015 were two brazen shootings at Yorkdale Mall — one fatal and one not — a non-fatal shooting at Michael's steakhouse downtown, and a fatal shooting on a busy stretch of Yonge St. in North York. All of those shootings targeted members of the Asian Assassinz, as did a January 2014 shooting in Richmond Hill that claimed the lives of 16-year-old Brenda Pathammavong and her alleged gangster boyfriend Premier Hoang.
In September 2015, shortly after the steakhouse shooting, alleged Chin Pac member Duy Ly Nguyen was shot to death in Vancouver. Two years earlier, Nguyen had survived being shot 14 times in the driveway of a Scarborough home.
Nguyen was murdered in Vancouver days after testifying at the preliminary hearing for the Asian Organized Crime project in Toronto. Since that week, the tit-for-tat bloodshed seemed to have stopped — until Saturday night.
On Saturday night, Toronto police rushed to the Playtime Bowl on Samor Road, near Dufferin Street and Lawrence Avenue West, shortly after 10 p.m. and found Ngo and Amar both gravely wounded from the gunfire.
Ngo died at the scene and Amar, though rushed to hospital, also later died of her injuries.
Witnesses previously reported hearing between five and 10 gunshots outside the busy bowling alley’s entrance.
Police believe Ngo was there socializing but was outside the bowling alley when he was confronted by the assailants, who ultimately chased him as they opened fire.
Amar – a 29-year-old newlywed – was enjoying a night of fun and games with her husband and younger sister when became collateral damage that night.
Her husband, Armandeep Luthra, told CTV News Toronto that he took Amar in his arms after she was hit by the barrage of bullets and collapsed.
“(I said) ‘If you can hear me, just breath,’” Luthra said. “Her eyes were closed and she didn’t respond to anything but she was breathing hard.”
Amar’s sister, Reema, said she had texted their father moments earlier, telling him that they had won prizes at some arcade games.
She said they came between the gunfire soon after they decided to leave for the night.
“As soon as we left the place, I just heard gunshots firing,” Reema said. “Me and him, we just bent down and then I turned around and I saw my sister and she was lying down. She was just drenched with blood… Her head was bleeding.”
Reema said the ordeal has shattered their family, who had already been grieving the loss of her mother Shakun to cancer eight months ago.
Luthra, who had just celebrated his first anniversary with Amar, said she had “so much love to give” that is now lost.
“One moment she was with us… We were so happy. We were playing games,” Luthra said.
“All I can say is I’m just shattered… I don’t have words to describe it. It’s just painful.”
Chin Pac versus Asian Assassinz: 2014 Richmond Hill murder exposes long feuding gang rivals
Timothy Lee told York investigators he planned Richmond Hill murder of Premier Hoang, Brenda Pathammavong on Centre Street in 2014
It was like a scene out of a movie when, at the end of a four-month-long sting operation by York Regional Police, the target, Timothy Lee, was arrested alongside an undercover detective.
“Leave him the f--- alone,” the agent, we'll call Michael, screamed at the arresting officers, maintaining his cover until the end as the pair are hauled out of the car and handcuffed.
During the next few days, Lee came to realize what had happened – he’d been duped, betrayed by his best friend.
The evidence garnered by the undercover officer eventually led to Lee’s first-degree murder conviction in the killing of Premier Hoang who was shot to death alongside Brenda Pathammavong on a snowy night in January 2014.
Often murders such as this one are viewed in a vacuum by the public who are given little information at the time of the killing. But Lee’s trial, earlier this year, put this murder and a string of other killings and shootings in the GTA into sharper focus.
The seeds of these killings were sown out of a simmering gang war that started years before Lee pulled out a gun and fired multiple rounds at a car carrying Hoang and Pathammavong.
It began in 2011 when a fist fight erupted in the Don Jail between two rival gang members: one a Chin Pac, the other a Project Original, an affiliate of the Asian Assassinz.
In the seven years since, police suspect at least 11 murders and a slew of shootings are connected to a long- running feud between the Chin Pac and Asian Assassinz.
While the war has largely been carried out on Toronto soil, on at least two occasions the bloodshed has spilled over into York Region.
The second incident occurred in November 2014 when Jerry Tuan Thanh Phan was shot to death while parked in a BMW SUV outside The Keg while hundreds of diners ate nearby, in Richmond Hill.
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