CALGARY -- Calgary's eight-year gang war has left dozens dead and city streets red with blood. Today, Calgary Sun crime reporter Nadia Moharib starts a three-day, in-depth look at the raging war.
"In taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior."
-- Thomas Fuller
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Some say it was over a stolen jacket, some insist it was a beef over drugs, a tiff over a girl or a dispute sparked after a girl was raped.
Police, gang members, their friends and associates have many theories on what ignited a gang war between the groups, dubbed Fresh Off the Boat and Fresh Off the Boat Killers, which has lasted at least eight years and claimed more than two dozen lives.
Police say before two clear sides evolved, it was just a group of friends selling drugs and enjoying the easy lifestyle it could buy.
Some apparently had a clubhouse in Edmonton, where sources say the sister of several men, later involved in gang activity, was raped.
Others claim the violence began when a group of buddies were dealing drugs and one went out on his own, creating rival groups while some say a dispute over distribution of crime proceeds led to a splinter group and made enemies of friends.
If there was a moment in time which might mark the start of the deadly duelling, many say it goes back to a 2001 shooting at a party in Huntington Hills.
When the dust settled 17-year-old Brandon Boychuk was clinging to life after being shot several times as he was running down an alley.
No one was ever charged.
"Everybody at the party knows who he is," Insp. Keith Pollack said at the time of the shooting. "The problem is no one is telling us."
As the bloodshed goes on unabated years later, that frustrating silence is still a sorry reality, a roadblock for police to laying charges in gang slayings that play out on city streets and recently took the life of an innocent man.
Despite making repeat appearances on the gang radar over the years, Boychuk has recently kept a low-profile, at least from police.
Some say he attended a funeral for gangster Sanjeev Mann this year -- the man who along with Boychuk was hit in a 2007 shooting -- while some say he is laying low.
Others insist he walked away from the world of crime.
While there is much debate about what started the bloody dispute between the groups, there is none about what it has become and the uneasiness it spawns for a city bracing for the next instalment in an ugly real-life, often life-ending, saga.
"We just simply don't know how it started," Organized Crime Staff Sgt. Gord Eiriksson says. "It may have morphed from a disagreement or a beef and spiralled into this level of violence.
"They can't even tell you why it is the way it is, they have just come to accept they may live and die by shooting.
"It's a pretty asinine way to live."
The New Year's Day shootings this year of three men -- one said to be a gang member, the other a drug dealer and the third an innocent man having a meal -- was a tragic reminder the deadly battle is still very much alive.
And only two weeks later police were investigating a drive-by shooting that killed gangster Matt Chubak.
Two others -- including one said to be an associate of slain gangster, Roger Chin, and who was previously shot last summer -- survived.
Since then, there have been no gang-related murders in Calgary but police know better than to see a few weeks of apparent peace as an indicator of a truce.
"People are either charged or have conditions against them," Eiriksson says.
"We've got people injured and believe it or not they have to recuperate. It's a lull, that's all it is."
Deputy Chief Murray Stooke says a slow but sure escalation of ongoing violence between the factions is characterized by a bloodthirsty quest for revenge.
And as it continues, others have joined the fray while many names resurface.
A former drug unit investigator sometimes sees that when they hear of arrests in gang-related crimes.
"I bought dope off some of them when they were young and then you see them evolve, they pop up," he says.
Years later, many of their lives still seem intertwined, too.
For many, so are their deaths.
Online tribute sites show many mourners know several of those slain, some getting tribute tattoos.
Robbie Jones, Adam Cavanagh and Kevin Anaya, for instance, all knew one another and all lost their lives to gang violence.
Amid pain detailed on the sites is a call for it all to end.
"My friend was killed because there was a beef between him and another person," says Alyx Nanji, who set up www.stopthebeef.com in February 2007 after a friend was killed in gang violence.
Eiriksson says he would rather see one man escape a gang than put five in jail and applauds any who leave.
"I know a few who have left the city," he says. "Hopefully, they turn their back on the lifestyle but if not, it's one less criminal for us to deal with."
