The gang that cut off a boy's hand with a machete
Everyone seems to know who did it -- but nobody dares to point the finger
Lena Sin The Province
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Daniel Godoy was standing right next to a youth whose hand was cut off. He doesn't see talking to police about it as an option.

Vancouver police Const. Adam Dhaliwal, a school liaison officer, says a teacher helped Wilson succeed. Vancouver police Const. Ciaran Feenan visits Templeton Secondary School, where he's the force's liaison officer. It was the machete incident involving a boy from Templeton that made up his mind to take on that role.

Ernie Dawson, manager of a housing co-operative, says youth gang members have given him 'four years of misery.' He couldn't remember how deep into the night it was.

He was drunk, sprawled on a couch and ready to pass out.

But Daniel Godoy remembers enough to know that he didn't pass out, that some guys at the party kept him up and that they were loud and obnoxious and mouthing off to another group of homies down the street.

"You guys don't have the balls to come down and do anything 'cause you're all drunk," Godoy remembers someone at the party yelling to the group down the block. "And the other guys were like, 'Yeah, we have the balls.'"

Beyond that lies a haze of images: The "other guys" showed up at the party, armed with machetes.

"Whoever was talking all that smack, come over here if you've got the balls," one of them hollered.

The room went eerily silent. Finally, someone stood up and all hell broke loose. It took only minutes for a 16-year-old boy to get his hand chopped off.

"I was basically right beside him," says Godoy, whose real name has been withheld to protect his identity.

"I thought 'I've gotta get the hell out of here.' So I went out the back door and walked home."

He split before the cops arrived; he didn't say a word to his mother when he got home.

Word spread fast on who did it. It was NC, kids whispered one to another.

The cops knew it, too.

Although no charges were laid, Vancouver police youth squad Det. Doug Spencer acknowledges a youth gang called the Nightcrawlers is believed responsible.

But no one was willing to be the rat, and the victim, an avid basketball player, wasn't talking either.

"We know who did it," says Spencer. "But as soon as word got out it was the Nightcrawlers, a code of silence just went up."

Fifteen-year-old Godoy puts it another way: "He already had his hand chopped off. What do you think will happen next? You go to the cops and get killed."

After the July 2006 attack in East Vancouver, the teen had his hand reattached and started that September in a new school. His uncle says the family does not want to comment on the incident.

But there was no question in the minds of Vancouver police and teachers at Templeton Secondary, where the victim was a student at the time of the attack, that they had to address the incident head-on.

"It happened at a time when the kids were coming back into school within a very short time. What did it do? It made them terrified. We're not talking about someone getting punched in the nose, we're talking about a kid who got part of his body severed," says Const. Ciaran Feenan.

The machete attack helped Feenan make up his mind, after more than four years with VPD's youth squad, to become Templeton's new school liaison officer.

"What started to bother me after four and a half years of doing some really progressive work is, after a while, watching kids hurt kids move to watching kids kill kids," he says. "You start to wonder -- are all kids like this?"

When school started last September, one of the first things Feenan did was gather 600 students from grades 8 through 10 to talk about gang awareness.

He calls it "awareness" because Feenan is acutely aware that by this age, prevention is a lost cause.

Those who want to join a youth gang are already in one and those who aren't need to know about the kids who are, he says.

While Feenan calls the machete victim a "good kid," he stops short of resorting to the age-old cliche of "wrong place at the wrong time."

"No one's at the wrong place at the wrong time," he says. "He wasn't a bad kid, by any means. But he was an unaware kid.

"Kids do not lose face, they do not back down, but what they need to know is when they're dealing with gangs they need to back down and walk or something bad's gonna happen. And that's what happened."

- - -

Vancouver police say youth gangs in the Lower Mainland are so fluid, it's hard keeping up with who they are. Although they brand themselves with identifying names, colours and monikers, they are generally not very organized.

They'll have one name in January and a different one by April.

The Nightcrawlers, who identify themselves with a burn mark on the hand, are no exception, and it's been said by some teens that NC no longer exists; they're now calling themselves Young Bloods.

Whatever their name, researchers say it's critical to keep tabs on such groups because even the least sophisticated of gangs have the potential to evolve.

That was a tough lesson learned in Edmonton, where the Northside Boys, initially dismissed as a "wannabe" gang, eventually morphed into a much more sophisticated street gang.

Already one former Nightcrawler is believed to have joined Redd Alert, an organized crime group that wields considerable influence in the Prairies and is growing in B.C.

Meanwhile, other Nightcrawlers have either reached or are nearing adulthood with little education, considerable criminal records and few options for employment.

- - -

Courtroom 101 in Vancouver's youth court is often crammed full of youth gang members.

They give each other nods of acknowledgement and the occasional high five while waiting for their cases to be called.

On an unusually hot July afternoon, there are two members of the East Van Soldiers, one Nightcrawler and three boys from the Link Gang facing varying charges of assault, extortion, obstruction of justice and mischief.

There are no parents here today, except for one mother.

"Thank you. Thank you for coming today," the judge says to the mother, taking note of the unusual appearance.

One of the last cases to be heard involves a 17-year-old Nightcrawler.

On a social networking site, he claims to be "currently residing but not abiding by the laws in East Van."

He pleads guilty to a charge of mischief for tagging "NC" and other words on a door in Gastown.

"Is this a gang thing?" the judge asks.

"I don't know," answers Crown counsel.

In just three years, the boy has amassed convictions for break-and-enter, robbery, possession of a weapon, uttering threats, assault and two breaches of probation orders.

"He's come around and he's doing much better," says Crown.

"Why is he doing much better?" the judge asks, unconvinced.

"It's explained in the pre-sentence report," Crown answers, then passes it up for the judge to read.

The judge's skeptical expression doesn't subside. But there's not much time; court closes soon.

After a few minutes of silence, he hands down his sentence: "You've developed quite a youth record and you've done some serious crimes.

"I'll accept that Crown and defence think you've turned the corner. But you should be aware of the fact that in a very short time you'll be an adult and if you continue this activity you'll be going to jail. You don't want to go to jail."

The teen is sentenced to a fine of $200 and dismissed.

He leaves the courtroom and joins his friends waiting outside.

- - -

In the last few years, that 17-year-old boy and his friends have been a constant source of fear and tension for his neighbours on Vancouver's east side.

Ernie Dawson calls it his "four years of misery."

Up until last December, the boy and his 18-year-old cousin -- both known Nightcrawlers -- lived in the same co-operative housing complex that Dawson's been managing since 1986.

He watched them grow up.

"Ten years ago they were little angels going to Sunday school. Now they're angels with broken wings," he says.

Vancouver police say the Nightcrawlers started to get their attention about a year and a half ago, terrorizing the community with robberies, assaults, drug dealing and vandalism.

Dawson says trouble began as early as 2002, although he doesn't know if the Nightcrawlers were entirely responsible for the chaos that has plagued the neighbourhood.

"The summer of 2002 was the worst," says Dawson.

Some 30 to 40 teens -- most of them runaways -- hauled 10 couches from Value Village and plonked them in the alley behind the building, creating a makeshift home for themselves.

Nights would bring drinking, smoking, yelling and fighting. The mornings brought a landscape of used condoms and empty bottles.

Inside, the havoc would be just as bad at times. Teenagers would break water pipes, causing floods, urinate in hallways and then pass out. The graffiti was the least of Dawson's problems. "It was like living on Hastings," he says.

The blame was pinned squarely on two units in the building, where the young tenants with largely absent parents harboured many of their friends.

It was in one of those units that police say the two cousins with the Nightcrawlers lived.

Growing up in the midst of all this is 16-year-old Johnson Wilson, who's been described by some as the "pride of the community."

He grew up in the same neighbourhood and knows most of the Nightcrawlers, but has stayed out of their circle.

Wilson went from being a high school drop-out in Grade 8 to an honour roll student and marathon runner last year in Grade 10, earning him an award from Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan for being an outstanding student.

He is remarkably unfazed by the violence that surrounds him.

A friend of his has been attacked with a machete, he's had his home broken in to, and he slept through a shooting outside his building last fall.

"Sometimes I have problems sleeping from the noise" is the extent of his complaints.

None of it has gone unnoticed by the police, who say even they're surprised Wilson has stayed out of trouble.

"I think [his teacher] has played a large part in his life. But some credit has got to go to him because he has the desire to stay out of it," says school liaison officer Const. Adam Dhaliwal.

The teen, however, sees it as no big deal. He made the decision some time ago that watching his friends get hassled by the cops wasn't for him.

And the Nightcrawlers don't "recruit" so much as kids seek them out, he explains.

"I say 'Hi,' but don't really hang out with them," Wilson says. "They know I'm not interested."

- - -

Teachers and youth workers who know the two cousins from the Nightcrawlers admit they've garnered a less than admirable reputation in a few short years. The 18-year-old is currently facing charges of assault and robbery.

But there was a time before the thuggery, and it wasn't all bad news.

"They're totally savable kids and they deserve to be respected," says Trevor Stokes, an alternative program teacher at Britannia Secondary.

"The elementary schools are filled with similar kids with similar struggles. We're becoming ghettoized on some level. There's so little positive peer influence because these kids are just trying to get through such basic needs of survival.

"And it's not that we're obligated to save these kids or help these kids, but don't we want to?"

lsin@png.canwest.com