Gunned down in the parking lot of a busy Lower Mainland shopping mall - one of three shootings in the Vancouver area on Tuesday - was the same person who rented the Surrey, B.C., penthouse where six people were brutally murdered in October 2007.Raphael Baldini had appeared in Vancouver Provincial Court earlier Tuesday on assault and uttering threats charges laid in October 2008.He was also facing a series of gun charges filed against him in November 2007, just weeks after six people - including innocent bystanders Chris Mohan and Ed Schellenberg - were shot execution-style in suite 1505 of Surrey's Balmoral Tower, which Baldini had been renting.The 21-year-old Baldini was sprayed with gunfire in the parking lot of the Guildford Mall at about 5:20 p.m. Tuesday - one of three targeted hits in Metro Vancouver in less than 24 hours.He was transported to hospital where he was declared dead just as his family was gathering.Baldini was associated with four of the victims in the 2007 Surrey apartment slaughter, all of whom were involved in drug trafficking. Police earlier confirmed that suspects in the slaying have been identified as members of the Red Scorpion gang, though no one has yet been charged.Another man was found shot to death in Coquitlam hours after Baldini's slaying. And just 24 hours before, James Ward Erickson was killed in another gangland-style murder Monday night in the rough Whalley neighbourhood inSurrey.Cpl. Dale Carr, a spokesman for the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, was just leaving the site of the Surrey murder Tuesday when he got called out to Coquitlam, where a woman's body was found slumped over in a car on a residential street.The woman was found dead of an apparent shooting, police said, but they could not confirm if it was a homicide.IHIT investigates all murders in the Metro Vancouver area except for those in the city of Vancouver.RCMP Supt. John Robin, who heads IHIT, said it does not appear that the two Tuesday-night murders are connected.He said homicide investigators have been run ragged by the crush of new murder files.
``What can you say? The guys are being called out all the time. They are working extremely hard. The beginning of last year was extremely busy and now the beginning of this year is just the same,'' Robin said.Metro Vancouver has had a rash of shootings over the last two weeks, as well as nine homicides so far in 2009. Of the murders, five have been the result of gunplay. Many of the shootings have occurred in public places like the Surrey mall parking lot. Shots were also fired at a busy intersection in Abbotsford two weeks ago - that time at one of the notorious Bacon brothers, who escaped unharmed.

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The body of Hark Hans, a 28-year-old Indo-Canadian man from Surrey, was found lying partly inside a white Honda on Wednesday night in the parking lot of the Eaglequest Coyote Creek Golf Course.Surrey RCMP Sgt. Roger Morrow said police were "aware" of Hans, but could not say if there was a connection to other recent shootings or to the drug trade."Investigators cannot confirm any involvement in the drug trade or affiliation with any gang," said Morrow.It was the 11th targeted killing this year in the Lower Mainland, according to statistics compiled by The Province.The shooting could have put innocent bystanders at risk of being injured, Morrow noted. Golfers were practising at the nearby driving range and diners were in the course's restaurant at the time.Oppal called the shooting "alarming," but pointed out that killings related to the drug trade in Metro Vancouver are not a recent phenomenon.
"It indicates how evil this whole underworld is, where people end up killing each other all for money and drugs and all the rest of it," he said.
While police generally have success in solving murders that are crimes of passion,gangland slayings are not as easy to crack, said Oppal.
"These crimes are not like ordinary crimes, where you have victims who come forward to the authorities and ask for help," he said.
"[Among drug gangs] the victims exact their own justice. They have their own justice system, and they take care of their own," said Oppal.
In total, there have been 18 murders across the Lower Mainland this year.
"Eighteen [murders], it's an extraordinary year," said RCMP Cpl. Dale Carr of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT).
"We need people to stop killing each other."
IHIT is responsible for investigating murders from Boston Bar to Pemberton, including all RCMP and municipal police departments except for Vancouver, West Vancouver and Delta.
He called IHIT "a very effective, very highly motivated unit," and rebutted criticism of its success rate.Carr noted a four-year-old murder case in Richmond was cracked this week and a Malaysian man accused of it is being extradited from Belgium to stand trial. He added that nearly half of the files that IHIT have handled since last May were solved. A man shot to death in a semi-rural area of northeast Coquitlam last week has been identified as Alfred "Fred" Walcott, 22.
Walcott pounded on the door of a house on Mason Avenue shortly after midnight on March 12, then collapsed and died on the doorstep.

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