An Abbotsford man police say is connected to the Townline Hill conflict has been charged with several firearm offences after being arrested by police Tuesday evening.
Police say officers from the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU) observed a vehicle believed to be connected to the ongoing conflict "engaged in behaviour consistent with drug trafficking" on Tuesday.
Officers pulled over the vehicle, but it then fled. The vehicle was relocated, a man was seen running from it, before it sped away again.
Police arrested the man and, with the help of a police dog, found a loaded nine-millimetre handgun nearby. The vehicle was not found again.
After the arrest, police searched a home in the 19800 block of 83rd Ave. in Langley. That search turned up "ammunition and a small pistol suspected of being modified to shoot .22 calibre ammunition."
Barinder Singh Dhaliwal, 33, has since been charged with one count of unauthorized possession of a firearm, one count of possession of a prohibited loaded firearm, one count of possession of a firearm with an altered serial number, and one count of possession contrary to a court order.
He is scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 8.
The Townline Hill conflict is named for Townline Road and adjacent neighbourhoods in which two groups of young men – primarily of South Asian descent – are battling for drug turf.
Three killings have so far been linked to the Townline Hill conflict – the October 2014 drive-by fatal shooting of 18-year-old Harwin Baringh on Sparrow Drive; the September 2015 death of innocent man Ping Shun Ao, 74, who was struck by a stray bullet which had been intended for his neighbour on Promontory Court; and the March 2016 shooting of a 22-year-old man while he was outside a home on Hawthorne Avenue.