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Young woman allegedly shot dead by a known criminal who wasn’t in jail, for some inexplicable reason

It was all over the news (at least on the west coast) on Friday when the latest horrid crime took place — a young woman was shot dead in her Maple Ridge BC (a Vancouver suburb) home, and another young man in that same home was injured. They were shot by a shotgun-wielding assailant in what police believed was a targeted attack.

Today the news is that the alleged assailant was arrested on Saturday. But reading the reports about it today, it’s as if the alleged assailant was born yesterday and had no past worth mentioning. This is frustrating because actually, it’s all about that past. Knowing that past could have foretold — thus prevented — this tragedy.

Both the Vancouver Sun and The Province newspapers (or “news” papers) only “report” about the alleged assailant as follows: “IHIT [Integrated Homicide Investigation Team] says Wareing is known to police and “is believed to be a significant concern to public safety.””

And the cops go on to explain that the streets are safer today because of his arrest. Well yes.

But that’s it!

All the various “news” media reports are like this. But the reporters apparently don’t read the news. I found today (by using “the internet”) that back in 2019, this alleged assailant was already a societal menace and was arrested after a massive string of serious crimes including the use of illegally-obtained weapons. This, from the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadow News (a Black Press newspaper) in 2019:

No bail for alleged carjacking jewelry store robber, says B.C. judge

A judge turned down a request to release a man accused of a crime spree, awaiting trial

 

Nov. 6, 2019

 

A judge refused to grant bail to a man accused of going on a spree of armed robberies and carjackings from in Langley, Surrey, and Vancouver last year.

Justin Michael Wareing has been in custody since last December, after he was arrested for a multi-day crime spree that took place from Dec. 20 to 22.

He asked a B.C. Supreme Court judge to release him into a drug treatment program while awaiting trial.

Over those three days, Crown prosecutors allege Wareing committed five counts of robbery, four of using an imitation firearm, failing to stop for police, using stolen credit cards, and assault, among other charges.

The spree began on Dec. 20 at the Langley Canadian Tire, where Wareing allegedly grabbed an air-soft pistol – essentially a realistic-looking pellet gun – from a cabinet while he was pretending to be interested in making a purchase.

He then allegedly headed into the parking lot, where he used the fake gun to force a man out of Toyota 4Runner, carjacking the vehicle and driving off.

On Dec. 22, Wareing allegedly approached the driver of a parked car in a Richmond McDonald’s lot, threatened him with a gun, and demanded his wallet and cellphone. The credit cards were used nearby shortly after.

The same day, a robbery at White Rock Jewellers in the Semiahmoo Shopping Centre saw a thief make off with $20,000 worth of jewels – allegedly Wareing again, wearing a mask and with a bandana over his face.

He then allegedly carjacked another driver at a Coquitlam strip mall the same day.

After forcing the driver out of his Mercedes SUV at gunpoint, Wareing allegedly shot the man multiple times in the head and hand.

The Mercedes was chased down by police, and after a foot chase Wareing was arrested. He had stolen jewelry and a BB gun – a different one than the air-soft pistol stolen from the Canadian Tire – on him when he was arrested.

The crime spree took place after a number of other incidents.

Wareing was first arrested in 2018 after he allegedly swiped $6,000 worth of Versace jackets from a store in Langley’s Willowbrook Shopping Centre on Oct. 25.

Wareing was arrested on Dec. 11 and released on bail on Dec. 14, and on Dec. 18 he allegedly stole more jackets from Alpine Start Outfitters in Vancouver, this time threatening the clerks with a knife.

After the subsequent crime spree and carjackings, Wareing appeared in court on Dec. 23 and was held in custody. He is now set to go on trial from Jan. 20 to 30 in 2020 for most of the charges. The Vancouver robbery is to be tried separately on June 9.

Justice Martha Devlin noted that Wareing’s criminal history included a number of other recent convictions, starting in 2017, when he pleaded guilty to theft and assault.

He was back in court on Jan. 3 of 2018 to plead guilty to assaulting a peace officer, and another asssault led to a plea in March.

He was on probation during all the October and December crimes for which he is facing trial.

Wareing is addicted to methamphetamines.

His lawyers asked that he be released to live at a residential drug treatment program.

“However, Crown counsel advised me that the proposed treatment facility is not licensed nor is it authorized by Vancouver Coastal Health,” Devlin wrote in her decision on Nov. 4.

She noted Wareing was on probation when his 2017 convictions took place.

In addition, the escalating level of violence in the robberies, from brandishing a knife to shooting a random driver in the head with a pellet gun were “troubling,” the judge said…

Unfortunately, there appears to be no “news” media follow-up on this goon’s trial, nor anything about his sentence, which couldn’t have been a very tough one, as Cashmere Ali was shot dead only two years since he was last in jail awaiting trial.

Golly who could have predicted this guy with what appears to me to be a pathological addiction to crime (or an evil disposition, or something) and drug addiction could go on to a life of crime?

There is a lot of highfalutin talk about guns from Justin Trudeau and his cabinet and their adoring “news” media (all stupidly centered on taking guns away from legal gun owners, who are the most law-abiding people on Earth), and on drug addiction, and on criminal justice and sentencing, and on the rising rate of serious crimes, and so on. But here we have a perfect example of why that is: a guy goes on a crime rampage, he goes to trial, he is obviously let off or given only a paltry sentence, and then, as if it’s scripted in advance,  he murders a beautiful young woman and injures another man. And who knows what else.

And yet we’re not told this in the “news.”

Unless we know about how the criminal justice system is working, we know nothing. We learn nothing. We do not know if what we’re doing works. We don’t know if our politicians and bureaucrats are doing their jobs. Or the judges. Or the cops. We don’t know how to proceed. And based on all that, we don’t know even how to vote. I’m trying not to be cynical here, but it’s hard.

UPDATED July 19 2022 – IN ANOTHER STORY

Joel Johannesen
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