Gangster Gurmit Singh Dhak executed Saturday while parked in Metrotown shopping centre parking lot

Longtime Vancouver gangster and convicted killer Gurmit Singh Dhak was executed Saturday, three years after he was wounded inside a Kitsilano restaurant.

Dhak, 32, was sitting inside his luxury SUV in the parking lot of Burnaby’s Metrotown mall at about 5:50 p.m. when his killer caught up with him.

Cpl. Dale Carr of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said Dhak was alone in the black BMW, though others told The Vancouver Sun that his wife and kids were nearby.

“The shopping centre was open at the time of the shooting, however there were very few shopping patrons in the parking lot at the time of the incident,” Carr said.

He said the murder appears “very targeted.”

Dhak was shot in the face, which is often the mark of a professional hit.

Police have seized surveillance video from the mall’s security team.

Dhak and his brother Sukhveer have a long list of enemies.

Gurmit Dhak refused to help police catch the masked gunmen who shot him in September 2007 while he was at a birthday party at Quattro on Fourth in Vancouver.

Dhak, who has been associated with a criminal organization dubbed “Billy’s Crew,” was charged in 2005 with uttering threats to Vancouver police who stopped his Lexus SUV after it had been shot up outside Club Uranus, a strip bar at 315 East Broadway in Vancouver.

At the time, police said Dhak was “very confrontational, very uncooperative with police and he made some threats.”

In April 2003, he got seven years in jail for the 1999 slaying of a 19-year-old who was shot in the head by a passenger in Dhak’s vehicle, after Dhak lowered the window so the killer could take aim. At the time of the shooting, Dhak was on probation and under a court-imposed curfew.

When the former South Slope gangster was arrested, police discovered two loaded guns and three balaclavas hidden in an airbag compartment in the vehicle. The guns were linked to a December 1998 non-fatal shooting of five men at the New Lucky Garden Restaurant.

Carr said forensic identification specialists conducted a comprehensive examination of the Metrotown scene fairly near the Sears store in the mall. “During the preliminary examination of the scene, it appears as though no other vehicle in the vicinity was struck by any of the shots fired,” Carr said.

Dhak’s brother Sukhveer and two co-accused are due back in Vancouver Provincial Court in November on trafficking and conspiracy charges laid in September 2008.

kbolan@vancouversun.com

The Real Scoop at vancouversun.com/bolan

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