After Monterrey saw piles of severed heads and corpses hanging from overpasses, it was hard to imagine a more gruesome attack in Mexico's industrial heartland. But the survivors pulled out of the city's burning Casino Royale described the truly hellish dimensions of the worst act of violence in the city in recent memory. The massacre illustrates how Mexico's drug cartels have steadily raised the stakes in trying to outbid one another as the most brutal player in the conflict. While their victims used to be limited to gangsters and police, now they are increasingly civilians, with catastrophic consequences.

CTV footage shows a gang of eight gunmen descending on the casino, located in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, on Thursday afternoon, Aug. 25, while about 150 croupiers and customers — mostly women — played bingo, roulette and slots. The scene quickly descended into psychosis and panic, as the crowd stampeded from the games into bathrooms, stairwells and a blocked emergency exit. They heard gunfire and explosions that they thought were grenades and saw men pour gasoline over the machines and set them alight. As the building burst into flames, most of the victims choked to death in trapped corners, while others burned as they tried to escape or were crushed by the stampede. When emergency crews finally smashed down the walls to rescue the survivors, corpses littered the game tables, stairwells and bathrooms. By Friday morning, police had counted 52 dead; dozens more were in hospitals.

Appearing via videolink from Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre were full-patch Hells Angels Robert Thomas and Norman Cocks. Standing at Norman’s side in prison garb, was his father, Throttle Lockers president, Robert Cocks.

Of the three who are still behind bars, Thomas has yet to obtain legal counsel, although he told the court he intended to do so within the next month, setting the pace for when particulars—the part of court proceedings that enables the accused to know the case they have to meet—will be read.

Appearing in person to get the update were Matthew Thomas McRae, 19, and Daniel Joseph McRae, 20, who were joined by their mother.

Anson Lloyd Schell and Thomas Vaughan, are also out on bail, but did not appear in court, choosing instead to be represented by their lawyers.

All seven were arrested several weeks after Rutland father Dain Phillips, 51, died from blows incurred during a June 12 altercation at a gravelly lot at the corner of McCurdy and Gibson roads.

The violent incident was not only the first murder in the Central Okanagan this year, it also marked the first time in B.C. history that full-patch Hells Angels have been charged with murder.

The recent attack that left high-profile gangster Jonathan Bacon dead and a full patch member of the Hell’s Angels injured is highly likely to spark reprisals but not a full-on gang war, says a gang expert.

Bacon, reputed leader of the Red Scorpion gang, survived assassination attempts in the past, but his luck ran out Aug. 14 when he died in a hail of bullets outside an upscale hotel in the lakeside city of Kelowna, B.C.

With 30-year-old Bacon was Hell’s Angel Larry Amero and two women, all of whom were injured. A member of the Independent Soldiers gang, James Riach, fled the scene before police arrived.

Masked gunmen opened rapid fire in broad daylight on the five, who were travelling in a luxury SUV. One of the women injured was the niece of a Hells Angels chapter president. She was shot in the neck and remains paralyzed.

Kelowna RCMP is working with the B.C.’s Integrated Gang Task Force to hunt down suspects and head off any counterattacks that may be in the works.

Michael Chettleburgh, Canada’s foremost expert on street gangs, says that given the status of Bacon and Amero, retaliation is a certainty, although he doesn’t expect a renewal of the gang wars that erupted in the Vancouver area in 2009.

“You can’t commit this incident without there being serious retribution,” he says, adding that the gang most likely to seek revenge is the Hell’s Angels biker gang.

“I would sense that the level of affront is going to feel much more acute with the Hell’s Angels than it would with the Red Scorpions. The Red Scorpions have been somewhat diminished over the last couple years, given police suppression, arrests, and 36 murders. The Hell’s Angels has more tentacles, so, I would say it’s likely to come more from the Hell’s Angels and/or one of their puppet clubs, of which there are several.”

Gang Alliances Common

Police haven’t said whether the gunman was targeting Bacon—the eldest of the three notorious Bacon brothers gang members—or others in the Porsche Cayenne. Bacon, Amero, and Riach had formed a loosely aligned criminal alliance dubbed the Wolf Pack.

Chettleburgh says interconnections between different gangs is more common today than in the past, and the Hells Angels, the Mafia, and other organized crime groups continue to form relationships with mid-level and street gangs to do the street-level work, such as drug trafficking, extortion, prostitution, and protection rackets.

“If they can access drugs better, cheaper drugs, if they can protect each other, and if they can take on what they perceive to be an emerging threat by joining forces in some kind of loose alliance with another group—absolutely, we see that all the time across the country.”

The heyday of the 70s and 80s when there was a brotherhood among Hell’s Angels and limited cooperation with other gangs is long gone, he says. “It’s now the brotherhood of the wallet.”

Police have said a shooting in Surrey on Aug. 15 has no apparent link to the Bacon hit. In that incident, a lone attacker shot at least eight times at a 32-year-old man as he was getting into a car. The man escaped with minor injuries from shattered glass.

Steve Dooley, a criminology instructor at Kwantlen University and a co-investigator with Acting Together, a project designed to prevent youth from joining gangs, says people have been fearful since the hit on Bacon.

“We’ve talked to kids and we’ve talked to parents, and there is a sense of fear in the community about what’s been happening,” he says. “There is a fear in the community based on things that are going on, and especially based on the fact that some of these things are happening in broad daylight where there’s a lot of innocent people around.”

That fear may be linked to the deadly gangland shoot-outs that played out in Lower Mainland streets over several months in 2009.

In all, more than 40 people were killed, mostly members of the Red Scorpions and the United Nations gang who were engaged in a brutal tit-for-tat turf war in the lucrative trade of imported cocaine and locally grown “B.C. Bud” marijuana.

The violence died down after police arrested several senior gang members including UN gang leader Barzan Tilli-Choli.

Infamous Bacon Brothers

Jonathan Bacon’s brother Jamie, who was convicted of weapons charges in 2010, is one of several charged with murder in relation to a shootout in a Surrey apartment in October 2007 in which six men—two of them innocent bystanders—were killed.

Charges of attempted murder against the middle brother, Jarrod, were stayed in 2004. However, he is facing unrelated weapons charges.

In a Vancouver court on Monday, a man linked to the UN gang was charged with conspiracy to kill the Bacon siblings and their Red Scorpion associates between Jan. 1, 2008 and Feb. 17, 2009. Several UN members and associates have been implicated in a plot to murder the brothers.

In 2008, police took the unusual step of warning the general public to avoid hang-outs frequented by the Bacon brothers because of “significant threats” to their safety.

“The drug trade is why you see all this violence,” says Chettleburgh, author of “Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs.”


“It’s control of a lucrative market that’s worth an estimated $8 to $10 billion-plus in B.C. When you have that much money on the line you have the conditions for crews to fight it out on the street.”

Supt. Tom McCluskie, the head of the Gang Task Force, has said that the tension in the gang world has elevated since the hit on Bacon and that pressure is being maintained on all B.C.’s gangs. However, like Chettleburgh, the police have also said they don’t expect a drug war.

Authorities have busted a major human sex trafficking operation involving Chicago street gangs, officials announced Wednesday.

A total of nine people were arrested, officials said. Four will appear in bond court Wednesday after they were arrested following a long-term undercover investigation into trafficking of children and young women, officials said.

Those who will appear include: Allen Sahura, Jaymes Hart, Travis Creekmore and Jerrell Creekmore, officials said.

Officials said this was the first time any state agency in the U.S. had used court-ordered wire-taps to crack a sex-trafficking case.

That one of the infamous Bacon brothers would end up dead from bullet wounds was always a given in the bloody shootouts among rival B.C. gangs.

The only unknowns were which Bacon, when and what would be the collateral damage.

Those questions were answered Sunday when Jonathan Bacon, oldest of the three brothers, died after he and five other passengers in a white SUV were gunned down by a masked assailant, outside one of Kelowna’s grandest hotels. The gunman fled in a green SUV after the shooting, which occurred in front of dozens of witnesses just before 3 p.m.

Jonathan’s brother Jamie, the youngest and reportedly the toughest and meanest, is in jail awaiting trial on murder charges for his involvement in the killing of six people. Jamie Bacon was convicted of gun charges in 2010.

The middle brother, Jarrod, was charged with attempted murder in 2004, but those charges were stayed and his whereabouts are “unknown” to police.

So toxic are the Bacon brothers, who were alleged leaders of the Red Scorpion gang, that police issued an unusual warning in 2008 to the community at large to avoid any places where the brothers were known to hang out, or risk getting shot at by their rivals.

The other passengers in the vehicle with Jonathan Bacon, who was out on bail for gun and drug charges, included a prominent member of the Hells Angels who was also injured and a member of the Independent Soldiers. All three gangs have been heavily involved in drug and weapon trafficking.

One of the passengers in the SUV that was shot at fled and has not been located. Police wouldn’t confirm whether Bacon was the intended target.

“The fluidity of gangs in this province changes all the time,” said Supt. Pat Fogarty with the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. “They gravitate to new relations, new people.

“The fact there was a biker, an ex-Red Scorpion and an Independent Soldier in a car is not that unusual. They’re all banding together and reconfiguring themselves into new identities.”

Former Vancouver police officer Douglas Spencer, a gang expert, said there will certainly be retaliation for the Kelowna shooting, because 24-hour surveillance on all the gang members is impossible.

“It now comes down to people’s reputation,” Spencer said. “They cannot allow people to push them around like that.

“Once you let one person push you around, they all will, but in what form and when is anybody’s guess. It could be tomorrow, it could be next year.”

Grand Okanagan hotel general manager Daniel Bibby said immediately after the shooting, guests were asked to stay inside the building. Stress counselling has been made available to guests and hotel employees.

“This is an incident we never expected but our employees are well-trained and when a crisis occurs, they know exactly what to do and took care of our guests and kept everyone calm,” Bibby said Monday.

Bibby called the shooting, which occurred on a popular tourist section of the lakeside resort in the Okanagan, an isolated incident.

As early as 2005, local papers had reported that the Hells Angels were welcome at the Grand Okanagan but were not allowed to wear their colours inside or park their motorcycles by the front door.

The violence among the rival gangs reached one of its deadliest peaks in 2007, when the bodies of six people were discovered in a condo unit in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb. The Surrey Six murders included two innocent men who were caught in the mass execution. Chris Mohan, who lived in the unit next door and Ed Schellenberg, a gas fireplace technician, were in the wrong place when alleged members of the Red Scorpion gang took out four members of a rival gang.

One of the alleged Red Scorpions, Dennis Karbovanec, has since pleaded guilty in three of those deaths, and has been sentenced to life. Jamie Bacon, the youngest of the Bacon brothers, is in jail along with four other alleged Red Scorpion associates, awaiting trial for the Surrey Six murders.

Steve Brown, the brother-in-law of Schellenberg, said that the latest shootings show that nothing has changed.

“We were rattled by this and obviously disappointed that violence continues,” he said Monday. “There’s stuff going on in the background but you always know that it’s going to come out again with guns and shootings. It never ends.”

The gangs of B.C.

Hells Angels

The outlaw motorcycle group made a push into Kelowna to establish its operations about six years ago after rumours their rivals, the Bandidos, were also planning to set up a chapter in the province. “We know that many of the members of Hells Angels are actively involved in crime,” said Sgt. Shinder Kirk of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of B.C. Two full-patch members of the Hells Angels were charged two months ago with second-degree murder for the beating death of a Kelowna man in June.

Red Scorpions

A multi-ethnic group that had its origins in the Fraser Valley when members met originally in youth detention facilities. The Bacon brothers joined the Red Scorpions after initially being members of the United Nations gang. One of the Red Scorpions, Dennis Karbovanec, pleaded guilty last year to three murder charges in the infamous Surrey Six murders. In that incident, four gang members were killed in a rival hit and two innocent victims — Chris Mohan, a neighbour in the condo unit, and Ed Shellenberg, a gas fireplace technician — were also slain.

United Nations Gang

Another multi-ethnic group formed in the mid-2000s in the Vancouver suburbs of the Fraser Valley. The gang consists of drug dealers who first met in high schools around Abbotsford. They established links to Asian organized gangs and peddled guns, drugs and stolen passports. One gang expert says of an original unit of about 50 members, 28 of them are now in jail, drug addicts or dead.

Independent Soldiers

A multi-ethnic gang with many members from the Indo-Canadian community and ties to organized groups from Calgary and Montreal. The gang has feuded with the Hells Angels in the past but more recently the two organizations have begun some joint projects.

San Francisco's biggest gang trial in years is heading to a federal court jury today after attorneys offered a final round of competing narratives of organized mayhem on the city's streets and unreliable accusations by government-paid informants.

The Mission District unit of the gang known as MS-13 "waged war against rival gang members" and "ended up spilling a lot of blood on the streets of San Francisco," Assistant U.S. Attorney Wilson Leung told the jury last week during seven days of closing arguments, due to end today.

In more than four months of testimony in U.S. District Court, the prosecution sought to portray the seven defendants as principals of a heavily armed organization that controlled its territory through fear and intimidation.

All seven face up to life in prison if convicted of a racketeering conspiracy that includes four 2008 murders.

MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, originated in El Salvador. Members are initiated by "jumping in," a beating that lasts 13 seconds. Then, according to prosecutors, they rise in the ranks by committing acts of violence.

Eighteen others indicted in 2008 have pleaded guilty, including two men who were sentenced to 20 years each for the fatal stabbing of 14-year-old Ivan Miranda in the Excelsior district in July 2008, and two others who await trial for a slaying outside the Daly City BART Station in February 2009.

Additional guilty pleas have come from six men who are awaiting sentencing after testifying for the prosecution. Their credibility is a critical issue in the case.

The witnesses provided inside accounts, supported by secretly recorded conversations, of attacks and plots in which they - and, allegedly, the defendants - took part.

Defense lawyers focused on inconsistencies in the witnesses' statements to federal agents and the jury. They said the six men, who were paid and promised reduced sentences in exchange for their cooperation, could not be trusted.

One witness, Jaime Martinez, "described how he was cooperating and would sell out his own brother to save his skin," said Lupe Martinez, lawyer for Angel Guevara, whom prosecutors described as a leader of MS-13's "clique" at 20th and Mission streets.

Mark Rosenbush, lawyer for defendant Moris Flores, said allegations that Flores had taken part in or ordered three separate shootings were based entirely on Jaime Martinez's uncorroborated testimony.

Martinez "is a liar, he is manipulative and deceptive," Rosenbush told the jury.

Prosecutors said the informants' testimony was corroborated by other evidence, including cell phone records tracking the defendants' movements after fatal shootings as well as their own clandestinely taped statements.

"No one is asking you to like the government's witnesses, but fairly and rationally evaluate their evidence," Leung, the prosecutor, told the jury.

The central charge in the case is racketeering, a conspiracy in a criminal enterprise that includes drug dealing, assaults and murders. The murder victims include Ernad Joldic and Philip Ng, described by prosecutors as ordinary people who happened to be wearing a rival gang's color, red, in the wrong neighborhood one day in March 2008.

Another man, Juan Rodriguez, was killed in a revenge slaying in May 2008, and Armando Estrada, a seller of fake documents, was shot in broad daylight in July 2008 for refusing to pay "taxes" to MS-13 in its territory, prosecutors said. They said a witness saw defendant Guillermo Herrera take off his bandanna and laugh after shooting Estrada.

Besides Guevara, Flores and Herrera, the defendants are Marvin Carcamo, Erick Lopez, Jonathan Cruz Ramirez and Walter Cruz-Zavala.

— dubbed so devious they are locked in one-man cells for 23 hours a day often for decades.
Lock down. Isolation. Administrative segregation.
Spread among 22 prisons, Texas has more inmates in so-called "ad-seg" than most other states in the nation.
They have been deemed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to be "confirmed" members of gangs, too organized, predatory and violent to mix with the 150,000 prisoners in general populations.
They serve their time in cages of about 9 feet by 7 feet with cement walls outfitted with solid steel doors or bars covered with mesh.
"We ain't the most likeable or most welcomed group in society," concedes 38-year-old Anastacio Garcia, a robber from the Rio Grande Valley who has been in isolation here for 15 years. "We sit here day in and day out, basically rotting ourselves away."
Another 4,000 or so inmates are serving temporary stints in ad-seg as punishment for breaking rules or being escape risks.
Their cells are identical to those on death row.
The American Civil Liberties Union and others contend ad-seg imprisonment is cruel and makes inmates meaner and more dysfunctional by the time they are freed.
Straight into isolation
Citing its ineffectiveness as well as cost concerns, Mississippi and Maine have scaled back its use. In California, thousands of inmates recently launched a hunger strike in protest.
A Texas lawmaker unsuccessfully sought this year to require the prison system to review the standards for putting an inmate in ad-seg - and determine whether they are more likely than others to end up back behind bars.
"We are talking about human beings in an isolated place for years at a time," said Rep. Marisa Marquez, a Houston native representing El Paso. "What does that do to them psychologically, and how does that help their rehabilitation when they are supposed to get out and function in society and be productive members?"
In Texas, members of eight prison gangs, categorized as Security Threat Groups, automatically go straight into isolation regardless of the crime they committed.
Those include "confirmed" members of the Texas Syndicate, Mexican Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood and others. Their only way out: renounce gang affiliations, which they rarely do out of loyalty or fear of retribution.
"When I first walked down that run, I seen it was dark and said, 'What the hell did I put myself into?' " said inmate Mike Mendoza, serving life for a Baytown murder. "All I did was walk forward. My heart was beating fast. I said, 'This is for real.' "
'Do not have sympathy'
Ad-seg cells are rarely seen by outsiders, but inmates have access to ministers, counselors and medical and mental health specialists.
Guards sometimes carry shields to protect themselves from being stabbed with homemade spears or pelted with excrement, urine or rotten food - rancid homemade cocktails used for attacks known as "chunking."
"Do not have sympathy for these men," said a retired TDCJ guard who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The former guard noted they are served three meals a day, have medical care and better lives than law-abiding people who end up living under bridges.
The worse, the better, says Aaron McCartney, whose father, a longshoreman, was murdered in Liberty in 2006 by gangsters ordered by their captain to steal a 14-year-old pick-up truck for spare parts.
"Cut their heads off. They don't deserve to live," McCartney said of his father's killers, who are in ad-seg. "They can think about what they did. That is where they deserve to be."
Zeke Young, head of Houston-based, Less than the Least Prison Ministry, which reaches out to inmates in isolation, is one of the few outsiders allowed into ad-seg.
"It is locked down. It is hot," he said, guessing at 115 degrees this time of year, without a cross breeze.
His radio show, also on the Web, is aimed at them. He visits cells, carries a Bible, a stool, and repeats this mantra: The only way out is up.
"I talk to the ones who will talk to me, I do my best to listen," he said. "It is horrible to see the consequences of gang membership. What a man does is give his life away, he stays locked away."
When inmates are taken out of their cells and walked to showers or recreation (a one-man cage), they are handcuffed behind their backs, escorted by two guards and searched extensively.
Still, inmate David Puckett, 27, escaped in March from ad-seg at a Beaumont prison by cutting through the top of a recreation cage.
'Among the living dead'
Puckett, who was in isolation for being an escape risk, scaled razor-wire fences and was later spotted at St. Lukes Hospital in Houston before being caught by deputy U.S. marshals in Nebraska.
Inmates contend the stringent lockup doesn't prepare them for freedom.
"I live among the living dead," said inmate Danny Corral, 32, who was convicted of murder, and sentenced at 16. "This cell is not very different from a mausoleum."
For their part, Texas prison officials contend ad-seg keeps the most dangerous inmates under control.
If placed in the general population, they will be asked by their gangs to follow orders and even kill.
Threats to families
Jason Clark, a TDCJ spokesman, said gangs, for example, have threatened to harm guards' families if they don't let drugs or other contraband into the prison.
Members have also been known to assault and target staff that "infringe" on the group or are perceived as having issues of "disrespect," Clark said.
Virgil Barfield, 55, who grew up in Houston's Heights neighborhood, spent 25 years in ad-seg.
"What carried me through at first was anger, sit back there and be angry," he said in an interview. He is now in general population after renouncing his gang.
"Sooner or later, you are going to have to deal with yourself," said Barfield, who went to prison for burglary, but murdered another inmate in a gang hit. "You have to look at what you've done in life, where you are going."
The ACLU contends ad-seg is arbitrary and ineffective.
"This type of isolation is pervasive around the country," said Amy Fettig, ACLU's senior counsel for the national prison project. "It is now being used at an unprecedented level.
"Unfortunately, when you place somebody in (ad-seg) you are not teaching them how to be a better person. You are simply driving them crazy."

Philadelphia man whom police once described as a hit man for drug dealers, and who is already serving two life sentences, went on trial Tuesday, charged with murder in two more killings.

Malik Collins, 24, and Anthony Collins, 28, are charged with shooting two people in a parked pickup truck the night of March 18, 2006. The killings in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Brewerytown were the result of a turf dispute between drug dealers, Assistant District Attorney Brian Zarallo said.

The Collinses were connected with a local drug gang and killed Johnny Harmon, 39, because he was selling drugs on the gang's turf, Zarallo said. A neighborhood resident, Latoya Bostick, 18, was an innocent victim, Zarallo said.




"Her only crime was that she thought Johnny Harmon was cute," Zarallo told jurors in the Court of Common Pleas.

More than a dozen shots were fired into the cab of the truck about 11 p.m., said Zarallo, and each victim was hit five times. They were pronounced dead within the hour.

Defense attorneys Samuel C. Stretton, for Anthony Collins, and Michael E. Wallace, for Malik Collins, cautioned jurors that the defendants had to be presumed innocent. The two chief witnesses against the Collinses have criminal records, and one cut a deal with federal prosecutors in return for helping in the city case, Zarallo acknowledged.

Malik Collins was convicted of the two earlier murders in 2008, according to court records.

He was arrested in 2006 after 15th District police officers Kirk Dodd and Williams Smith had a robbery victim call a cellphone stolen by two men.

A man answered, and the victim said he would pay $100 for return of the phone.

When two men appeared to collect the cash, police were waiting.

One of those arrested was Malik Collins, who was carrying a 9mm pistol.

Malik Collins grew up around the 3000 block of Thompson Street in Brewerytown and was convicted of murder in two 2005 killings.

The trial is expected to last about a week. The Collinses face life sentences if they are found guilty of murder in the 2006 killings.

21-year-old inmate died Tuesday night after a fight with another inmate at the maximum-security Edmonton Institution.

Homicide detectives are investigating the 21-year-old’s death as suspicious, but Police Chief Rod Knecht called it the city’s 34th homicide Wednesday morning in an interview with Global News.

Two inmates with a history of gang affiliations began fighting at around 7 p.m. in the prison’s G-unit, a cellblock used to house more troublesome inmates, Edmonton Institution spokesman Rick Dyhm said.

Correctional officers noticed the fight, used a loudspeaker to tell inmates to stop, then fired tear gas into the area. The inmates stopped fighting, and officers escorted one inmate back to his cell.

They found the second inmate with stab wounds and performed cardio-pulmonary resuscitation until paramedics arrived. He was later declared dead.

Both individuals have ties to aboriginal gangs in Saskatchewan, Dyhm said. The victim was a member of the Scorpion Brothers, the other man is a member of the Terror Squad. But Dyhm said it’s too early to say the death was motivated by a gang dispute.

“I cannot say unequivocally it’s gang-related,” Dyhm said. “It also could have been a dispute between two inmates. We’ve had a lot of murders over the years, and it’s ‘I don’t like you, you don’t like me.’”

Prisoners were locked in their cells after the death. The prison will remain in the heightened state of security until it is safe to return to normal, Dyhm said. The other inmate involved in the fight has been placed in segregation.

The fight occurred when inmates were free to move around. Dyhm said he assumes a weapon was involved, given what happened, but could not identify what was used. The altercation would have been caught on camera, he said.

The victim had not committed any acts of major concern for prison staff, Dyhm said, and was not sharing a cell with the inmate he fought. He had only been in the facility since July 4.

Whenever an inmate dies, Corrections Canada investigators review the incident. An additional external investigator is also typically hired, Dyhm said.

An autopsy is slated for Wednesday afternoon.

This is the second inmate killing this year at the prison.

In February, Gyozo Victor Barasso, 45, was stabbed several times inside one of the prison’s units in what police say was a gang-related killing. Inmates Joshua Pickunyk, 21, and Brent Harold Boake, 20, are charged with first-degree murder. Three other inmates face charges as accessories after the fact.

Since 2000, there have been two other homicides at the federal prison.

Roland Simard was strangled in his cell on Oct. 24, 2002. Three inmates wearing masks were seen leaving Simard’s cell shortly before his body was found. While guards knew who the masked inmates were, no charges were laid because it was impossible to prove Simard hadn’t been killed earlier by somebody else.

A fatality inquiry into the death highlighted the need for video surveillance at the prison.

The other homicide occurred Jan. 16, 2000, when Jason Kerr killed Joseph Garon in a fight in the prison’s dining room.

Kerr stabbed Garon in the head with a sharpened spoon after Garon attacked him with a makeshift knife. Kerr was acquitted of the killing because he acted in self-defence.

Dyhm said the institution makes every effort to reduce gang-related violence. Prisoners are interviewed during the admission process and separated to various units based on known or suspected gang affiliations. He said the institution monitors each prisoner’s gang status for changes, and has preventive security staff tasked with intercepting prisoner communications, such as phone calls and mail.

“We have constant vigilance in terms of our prison population and what plans they have,” Dyhm said. “We’re a maximum-security penitentiary. We’ve got numerous different gangs, so we work at separating them.“There’s always security concerns and issues at a maximum-security penitentiary.”

Dyhm said the institution currently houses 277 inmates. The facility has a listed capacity of 228 on Correction Canada’s website, but Dyhm said the current maximum capacity is 305.

It was built in 1978 and is slated to expand by 96 beds by 2014.

Mr Duggan, 29, was shot by police officers a week ago in Ferry Lane, as officers attempted to make an arrest.

Post-mortem tests found he died from a single bullet wound to the chest.

Officials from the Independent Police Complaints Commission are in Tottenham talking to people to gather more information.

Violence began in Tottenham on Saturday after the fatal shooting by police of Mark Duggan.

The riots then spread to other parts of London and other cities in England.

Further tests
Investigations by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) show two shots were fired by a Scotland Yard CO19 firearms officer.

But the police watchdog said there was no evidence Mr Duggan had fired at police.

The IPCC said ballistic tests showed "no evidence that the handgun found at the scene was fired".

Further tests are being conducted on the illegal firearm, which was converted from a blank-firing pistol to one that shoots live rounds, the IPCC said.

A spokeswoman for the Duggan family said one of the options being considered was to request a second post-mortem examination.

Witness boards
In order to try and speak to as many witnesses as possible, IPCC investigators will be stopping and talking to commuters, handing out information leaflets and putting up witness boards and posters.

IPCC Commissioner Rachel Cerfontyne said: "It is one week since Mark Duggan died on Ferry Lane.

"It is a busy road and there is a busy Tube and train station just minutes away.

"I want to appeal directly to anyone who saw or heard anything that may assist us with our investigation - or if you know anyone who has any information and has yet to come forward and speak to us, please urge them to do so."

The inquest into Mr Duggan's death was opened at North London Coroner's Court in High Barnet on 9 August and adjourned until 12 December.

The leader of a notorious Mexican drug gang, who confessed to directly carrying out 300 homicides and ordering 600 others, has been arrested in the central state of Mexico.
Oscar Osvaldo Garcia Montoya, the leader of the Mexican drug gang, La Mano con Ojos (The Hand with Eyes), was arrested Thursday in the Mexico City borough of Tlalpan by Federal Police.
Montoya, a deserter from Mexico's marines and a former law enforcement officer, had established himself as one of the most intimidating gang leaders in the nation and had cultivated an especially macabre reputation for his gang, which specialized in the torture and decapitation of its victims
A former enforcer and hit man for the infamous Beltran Leyva gang, Montoya used his military training to carry out a multitude of killings. He also served as a bodyguard to many of the group's top bosses before forming his own gang.
Aside from controlling the sales and distribution of illegal drugs in the state of Mexico, his current group is suspected in hundred of murders, including the 2009 massacre of 24 people in the La Marquesa forest outside of Mexico City.
According to Mexican authorities, Montoya confessed to personally carrying out 300 murders and to giving the order for 600 more. He also told police that this weekend's plans involved the decapitation of six gang members who were planning on deserting the group. The murders were to be recorded and sent to members of the media.

Winnipeg street reopened to traffic around 4 p.m. Friday, in time for rush hour, following a lengthy closure while police investigated a fatal stabbing.

Police blocked a section of Osborne Street, between Wardlaw Avenue and Stradbrook Avenue, around 6:30 a.m. after a man was stabbed multiple times in Osborne Village.

Blood-stained clothing or gauze lies crumpled on the sidewalk in front of Ozzy's Bar. CBC
There was a major disturbance just before 3 a.m. involving about 50 people near Ozzy's Bar in the Osborne Village Inn, police said.

Officers responding to the calls found the stabbing victim, who was taken to hospital, where he later died.

According to area residents, the "major disturbance" was a street brawl. There are also reports of gunshots being fired at about the same time.

No arrests have been made.

The man's death is the city's 24th homicide of 2011.

No further information, such as the man's age, has been released by police.

The Osborne Village area has had its share of violence in recent days. On July 13, a tattoo parlour was damaged after a failed firebombing, which has been attributed to fighting between outlaw biker gangs the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels.

On Thursday, a 29-year-old man was sent to hospital in critical condition after a fight at River Avenue and Osborne Street. He was later upgraded to stable condition.

An area near the Toad in the Hole pub was surrounded with yellow police tape during the morning rush hour and a police cruiser was parked on the sidewalk.