Police in Thailand have issued arrest warrants for two former members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) who are wanted for the killing of former Abbotsford gangster Jimi Sandhu.
Investigators have identified the suspects as Gene Karl Lahrkamp, 36, and Matthew Leandre Ovide Dupre, also 36. Canada’s Department of National Defence confirmed with The Abbotsford News that both men were released as corporals from the CAF. Dupre served from 2005 to 2013, and Lahrkamp served from 2012-18.
Sandhu, 32, was gunned down Feb. 4 while getting out of his car at a beachside resort in Rawai, Phuket, where he apparently owned a villa.
Rawai is a village on the southeast coast of Phuket, Thailand’s largest island.
Thai police reported that two men had jumped out of the bushes and fired up to 20 shots at Sandhu as he got out of his vehicle.
RELATED: Former Abbotsford gangster gunned down at resort in Thailand
Police said the two men left the scene and threw their weapons – two 9mm handguns, a CZ and a Walther – into the sea, but the guns were later retrieved in shallow water with the use of a metal detector.
The pair had arrived in Thailand on Dec. 18 and left on Feb. 6, according to police.
Investigators later identified them through CCTV footage and other evidence.
Thai police said they have connected with Interpol and informed all 195 member countries around the world about the wanted men.
Sandhu, who moved from India at the age of seven after his grandmother in Abbotsford adopted him, was one of three men who were the subject of a public warning by the Abbotsford Police Department (APD) in 2015.
Police at the time said, due to his gang activities, he posed a “significant harm to the safety of the community” and anyone who associated with him.
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He was charged in January 2014 with second-degree murder in the killing of Red Scorpions gangster Matt Campbell, who staggered into a Fraser Valley Auto Mall business bleeding profusely from a stab wound to his neck.
But charges were later dropped against Sandhu, due to what Crown counsel said was an unlikelihood of conviction.
Sandhu was deported from Canada in 2016 for “serious criminality” and was arrested in India in 2018 for allegedly running a drug operation there.
RELATED: Former Abbotsford gangster arrested for drug operation in India
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Canadians Gene Karl Lahrkamp (right) and Matthew Leandre Ovide Dupre are wanted in relation to the killing of Jimi Sandhu, formerly of Abbotsford, in Thailand on Feb. 4.
Former Abbotsford gangster Jimi Sandhu was gunned down in Thailand on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022.
