Gang war blamed for fatal shooting in West Broadway

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This article was published 15/06/2021 (1584 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Myung Suk Kang was in her West Broadway convenience store when shots rang out; a bullet pierced the front window and hit the ice-cream freezer just feet away from the cramped counter.

“My window — shot, broken,” Suk Kang said Tuesday as she talked about the brazen shooting of Kyle Anthony Braithwaite, 29, at Young and Balmoral streets around 3:45 p.m. Monday. Despite resuscitation efforts by two passersby, who were nurses, he died in hospital.

Suk Kang said she heard four or five gunshots — the sound was deafening. She ran and hid behind the counter. When she looked outside about 15 minutes after the shooting, she saw blood “everywhere.”

A woman was wailing next to the injured man as two people performed CPR, Suk Kang said.

Police believe the homicide wasn’t random but would not say whether it was gang-related. No arrests have been announced.

However, Mitch Bourbonniere, a Mama Bear Clan community outreach worker with decades of experience dealing with street gangs, said the shooting was part of an active war between B-side and the Mad Cowz.

Bourbonniere said Braithwaite’s killing was in retaliation for another recent incident in which a Mad Cowz gangbanger was shot.

The two street gangs have long been rivals with sometimes bloody results — in February 2013, B-sider William Moar was shot to death inside Johnny G’s restaurant on Main Street. In June 2013, a Mad Cowz gang member was left brain-damaged after he was shot several times at close range as he sat in a car near Sherbrook Street and Wolseley Avenue.

Braithwaite had a lengthy criminal record, including a prison sentence for aggravated assault, but was not currently before the court on any charges. Most recently, Braithwaite was sentenced in April 2020 to six months in jail for several offences, including two counts of assaulting police officers, impaired driving, and possession of a stolen automobile.

On Monday, a witness told the Free Press he saw a black vehicle peel away from the scene across from Balmoral Hall School around 3:45 p.m., a time when parents would normally pick up their girls after classes let out at the posh private school.

A day later, bloody footprints marked with blue chalk still lined the Young Street sidewalk next to the mostly washed away pool of blood on the street, while police markings and measuring tape pointed to bullet damage on the side of an apartment building across from Suk Kang’s shop.

A black nitrile glove was littered on the boulevard and an unmarked police vehicle driven by two men in suits slowly made its way down Young Street.

Kevin, who has lived in an apartment across the street from the shooting scene since 2016 and requested his surname be withheld, said the area is safe. He thought the gunshots were construction noises, at first.

“It’s usually a really good area. We don’t see that kind of thing,” Kevin said, having just left Suk Kang’s shop with a carton of milk and a pack of cigarettes.

A caretaker who lives nearby also said the shooting surprised him.

“It’s a quiet neighbourhood. Friendly,” he said. “It could happen here. It could happen anywhere.”

Down the street, Balmoral Hall students played in the school yard over the lunch hour.

As for Suk Kang, Monday’s violence marked the second time in the past year a bullet has ripped into her store. Earlier, someone shot at her heavy metal door, she said as she pointed to the imprint of a bullet.

— with files from Dean Pritchard and Malak Abas

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca