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Murder victim previously arrested for Abbotsford drive-by shooting

Arundeep Cheema was fatally shot last Friday in North Delta
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Arundeep Cheema was found fatally shot in his vehicle at this North Delta residence on Friday.

A man who was arrested in 2012 as a suspect in a drive-by shooting in Abbotsford was himself the victim of such a crime last Friday in North Delta.

Arundeep Cheema, 24, of Surrey was fatally shot while sitting in his vehicle in the driveway of the North Delta home he was visiting, according to the Delta Police Department.

The shooting, which police say appears to be targeted, took place at about 8:20 p.m. in the 11800 block of 75A Ave.

No arrests have been made, and police are continuing to investigate.

Cheema was among four men arrested Sept. 4, 2012 after police received a report of shots having been fired in the 2500 block of Bradner Road in Abbotsford.

According to "information to obtain (ITO) a search warrant" documents obtained by the Abbotsford News in January 2013, among those arrested with Cheema was Jujhar Khun-Khun, now awaiting trial with two others for the murder of Red Scorpion gangster Jonathan Bacon in August 2011.

The ITO stated that police stopped the four men in a Dodge Charger that had  been seen leaving the area after shots were heard.

A man who had been in a second car at the scene was shot in the arm, but his three companions were not injured.

The group had apparently returned from a trip to the PNE in Vancouver and had just pulled into the driveway of the Bradner Road home when shots were fired at them.

Police followed the Charger and stopped the vehicle in Aldergrove. The car was seized, leading to the application (the ITO) to search it for evidence.

The four men arrested were released and none has ever been charged in relation to the shooting.

The Bradner Road residence had been the scene of a prior drive-by shooting in January 2011. Nobody was injured, and police at the time said the home was occupied by two brothers known to police.

According to the ITO documents, one of those brothers was in the vehicle shot at during the incident on Sept. 4, 2012. The other brother is known to have connections to the Bacon brothers, formerly of Abbotsford.

Shortly after the shooting, Abbotsford Police installed video surveillance cameras in the 2500 block of Bradner Road.

Khun-Khun himself was the victim of three targeted shootings – he was critically injured in two of them – before his arrest in February 2013 for Jonathan Bacon's murder in Kelowna.

Khun-Khun and his co-accused Michael Kerry Hunter and Jason Thomas McBride are currently in prison awaiting their murder trial, which has been slated to start April 4, 2016 in Kelowna.

 



Vikki Hopes

About the Author: Vikki Hopes

I have been a journalist for almost 40 years, and have been at the Abbotsford News since 1991.
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