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.