Burnaby double murder
suspect Angus Mitchell
had history of violent
confrontations and police
complaints
Childhood associates say
Angus Mitchell changed in high school
Kim Bolan and Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun, June 9, 2012
RCMP Insp. Tim Shields holds up photos of Angus David Mitchell
during a news conference in Burnaby, B.C. Wednesday, May 30, 2012.
Mitchell is wanted for attempted murder and is considered armed
and extremely dangerous. (Photo: Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)
Angus David Mitchell is believed to be in possession of a
Mossberg rifle simlar [sic] to the one pictured. (Screengrab, GI)
A CrimeStoppers photo of Mitchell
Weeks before suspected killer Angus Mitchell got a firearms permit last fall, he attacked a woman and her young children in east Vancouver, The Vancouver Sun has learned.
Mitchell, who died in a police shootout May 30, was the subject of a CrimeStoppers’ bulletin about an assault by a “crazed male” against a mother with a stroller on Aug. 8, 2011.
“This unknown but highly agitated male ran up from behind to a mother and young daughter and shoved aside her stroller containing a three-month-old baby inside and then pushed the baby’s mother, causing her to be in great fear for the safety of herself and her children,” the bulletin said.
Amazingly, the victim was able to snap a photo of her attacker, which is attached to the bulletin. It shows a deranged-looking and shirtless Mitchell — the suspected gunman in two Burnaby murders May 27 and a non-fatal shooting May 29.
The August 2011 attack is just one of several complaints police received about Mitchell in Vernon, Metro Vancouver and Victoria spanning more than two years before he embarked on a murderous rampage last week. Mitchell appeared to be working his way through a hit list with 15 targets.
Despite his history of instability and aggression, Mitchell was able to avoid criminal charges, legally obtain a firearms licence and even get back his Mossberg Maverick rifle from police after his arrest on Feb. 7, 2012 in Victoria under the Mental Health Act.
And he was able to execute waitress Chinh (Vivian) Diem Huynh and her boss Huong (Andy) Tran at Tran’s tiny sushi restaurant in Burnaby before shooting and wounding his former landlord two days later.
Liberal MLA and former B.C. solicitor-general Kash Heed said there are troubling questions that need to be answered about the case – preferably publicly through a Coroner’s Inquest.
Were enough checks done before his licence being issued? Did all the police agencies that dealt with Mitchell check the PRIME computer system which documents contacts with police even when no charges are laid?
“If we need to change the system to ensure that an individual like this does not have access to firearms, we need to make those changes to the system. But that needs to be identified through a Coroner’s inquest,” Heed said Friday.
“We have a situation where three people are dead and one is seriously wounded. We have an individual who has come into contact with several police agencies in the recent past. At one point, this individual’s firearm was actually taken away by the police. He managed to get it back. He went on this killing spree. He had several others on his list and we were fortunate that the RCMP were able to … stop him before he killed anyone else.”
A Sun investigation into Mitchell’s troubled life has uncovered several disturbing incidents that should have raised red flags. Some were reported to police and some were not.
Victoria Police confirmed a week ago that Mitchell’s gun was seized after he took it to a medical clinic Feb. 7 and made veiled threats. It was returned to him several weeks later because he was never charged.
Vancouver Police have also confirmed they were called to Mitchell’s home on Sept. 30, 2011 after a dispute with his roommates. He was taken into custody, but never charged, despite struggling with the arresting officer and possessing a knife.
VPD Const. Lindsey Houghton said Mitchell was arrested because “his level of belligerence towards the officers increased dramatically, and the officers decided the best course of action was to breach him out of there.”
In early 2012, Mitchell filed a complaint against one of the VPD officers, which the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner is now investigating.
Then there was the Aug. 8, 2011 stranger attack on the mother that police would attend the following month. That incident occurred about two kilometres from Mitchell’s residence at 3333 Euclid in east Vancouver.
Mitchell screamed at the woman as she tried to protect her baby and crying seven-year-old daughter.
VPD Sgt. Ron Fairweather, the municipal liaison with CrimeStoppers, said police never identified a suspect after the photo was released last October but agreed there are “striking similarities” with Mitchell. RCMP also confirmed the late gunman had tattoos on his back like those in the earlier suspect description.
And the list goes on.
In July 2011, while doing security at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival in Yaletown’s David Lam Park, Mitchell smacked a co-worker’s arm and behaved so erratically that the worker reported the incident to his supervisor.
Also in 2011, Mitchell posted a frightening message on a former classmate’s Facebook page, the woman disclosed to her friends on the social networking site after Mitchell died May 30th.
In Mitchell’s hometown of Vernon, RCMP had contact with him on a number of different occasions between 2010 and 2012, but no charges were ever laid. Gord Molendyk, RCMP spokesman in Vernon, told reporters the incidents were “suspicious” but not criminal.
Another former roommate told The Sun that in early 2007, Mitchell smashed the car windows of a third resident of the house he lived in near Nanaimo and 33rd in Vancouver. The roommate, Jacky Jin, said he called police at the time, but they didn’t arrive.
Mitchell, 26 when he died, also displayed volatile behaviour at times in Vancouver shelters over the last five years, where he sometimes pretended to be younger than he was so he could access youth programs.
B.C.’s Chief Firearms Officer Terry Hamilton, who does the checks for those acquiring gun licences, said she was not able to comment either specifically about Mitchell or generally about the process to get a licence. She referred The Sun to the RCMP in Ottawa, but no one called back.
Coroner Barb McLintock said a decision on whether to hold an inquest won’t be made until after Vancouver police has finished its investigation into the RCMP shooting of Mitchell.
Mitchell grew up in a well-heeled family in Vernon overlooking Okanagan Lake. Attractive, small in stature and athletic, he had lots of friends as a younger child. But he started getting into trouble in high school.
Some of Mitchell’s old high school friends in Vernon weren’t surprised at his violent demise, according to a revealing Facebook exchange.
“He was very unpredictable and looking back on it, he always seemed to pick on those who were maybe weaker than he was,” Cody Vigeant wrote on May 30. “It seems like this was his media of choice to get his point across. Too bad, those demons were just too much to deal with.”
Matthew Sparkes said he enjoyed summer days at Mitchell’s lakeside family home when they were in elementary school.
“He was so nice and giving and then high school came and he was angry all the time,” Sparkes wrote. “I figured he was going through some stuff or had little man syndrome, but he probably had an undiagnosed mental disorder by the sounds of it.”
Derek Townsend, a 27-year-old lumber salesman living in Vancouver, remembers playing soccer with Mitchell as kids growing up in Vernon.
As 12-year-olds, they won the provincial championships and Mitchell’s dad coached the team.
“On the team he was fine, but he was always trying to get you to do something mischievous with him,” Townsend told The Sun. “He was a bit of a troublemaker, he would just create mischief … If his parents were out of town they would return and probably find something that they’d give him shit for.”
Another old school friend, Wendy Schenkeveld, said the Mitchell she remembers — an athletic, “normal” kid — is nothing like the photo of the crazed man suspected of methodically hunting down and shooting three people.
“He was fun-loving, he liked to have a good time,” said Schenkeveld, who is raising her family in Vernon. “He was always laughing, he was happy. I couldn’t say anything bad about him.”
Schenkeveld lost touch with Mitchell after high school, and learned about his crime spree and his death in a police shootout through a friend’s Facebook message.
“It was shocking, disturbingly shocking. It was weird.”
As Mitchell evolved from soccer star to calculating killer, there would have been signals of his troubling transition like those now coming to light.
Irwin Cohen, head of the criminology department at the University of the Fraser Valley, said there are usually warning signs before someone commits a carefully planned act of extreme violence like Mitchell did.
“Typically when you have cases which involve extreme violence – and especially thought-out and planned violence — there are warning signs,” Cohen said.
But the signals can be small and occur over time, he added. “It’s not that there are big flags going off, that you should have known in five years he is going to kill somebody.”
Changes in behaviour like settings fires, cruelty to animals, aggression, jumping from job to job are among the signs. Yet many bystanders are hesitant to intervene because they either feel it’s none of their business or think the behaviour isn’t real, he said.
“My guess is when you start profiling Angus all the way through, you say ‘here you go, there are a couple from this stage and from that stage.’ ”
When former roommate Jacky Jin met Mitchell in early 2007, he was immediately alarmed by his demeanour. Jin, who was studying in Vancouver at the time, said Mitchell would slip into a “stupor.”
“I saw him staring at the fridge and he didn’t move any part of his muscles,” Jin recalled in an interview from Beijing. “It was like he was a sculpture, so I was like really scared.”
Jin soon learned that Mitchell was afraid of him because of scarring on his face from a recent car accident.
“He started to ask me questions like ‘Are you planning to murder me?’ ” Jin said. “He was paranoid.”
Mitchell was smart, manipulative and could also be extremely polite, Jin said, until he would erupt over something minor. Things came to a head when Mitchell got drunk one night and started yelling, Jin said. As the others in the house discussed what they would do to evict Mitchell, he went outside and “started to smash the car of the guy living upstairs.”
It was then that Jin called police, but no one ever showed up. Mitchell was evicted the next day.
“I don’t think he was actually an evil person. I think he is living in his dreams,” Jin said. “People with this kind of symptoms, they can suddenly become violent without any external stimulations.”
Sai Omkaram saw none of the signs that Jin did when he shared a townhouse with Mitchell in Surrey between late 2008 and late 2009.
At the time, Mitchell was working as a security guard, though seemed to bounce between jobs, Omkaram said Friday. They became friends and would go out for a bite, hit the gym and even check out seminars on philosophy and spirituality.
Omkaram said he kept in touch with Mitchell after they moved out until about a year ago.
When he saw the news last week, “I was utterly shocked, devastated and completely taken aback.”
Insp. Kevin Hacket, head of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, said police may never be able to find a motive behind Mitchell’s senseless rampage.
He said Huynh, the waitress at Burnaby’s Royal Oak Sushi House, was on Mitchell’s list, while Tran, the owner, appears to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Huynh was a single mom to a little girl. Tran also had two preschool-aged children.
Outside the little restaurant, there is a large shrine of flowers, notes and mementoes placed by customers and strangers who were horrified by the murders.
One card tucked inside a bouquet of flowers, signed by Judi, reads: “To a pair of beautiful people who needlessly died so tragically. You will be missed. Yes, I will miss the food, but most of all I will miss your wonderful, welcome smiles and friendly greeting.”
Another card, signed by Laura and Trevor Enberg, ended with what appeared to be their usual order: “Our condolences to all those involved in this terrible tragedy — our thoughts are with you all. California roll, six-piece salmon sushi, extra ginger.”
Kbolan@vancouversun.com
lculbert@vancouversun.com
with file from Mike Hager