A B.C. Supreme Court judge has sentenced a man convicted in a 2018 double homicide to life in prison no chance of parole for 17 years. Kane Carter, 30, was found guilty by a jury of two counts of second-degree murder in the shooting deaths of 15-year-old Alfred Wong and 23-year-old Kevin Whiteside on East Broadway near Ontario Street in Vancouver. Carter was tried on the same charges in 2024, but the case ended in a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict. Wong, an innocent bystander who was in the backseat of his parents’ car, was struck once in the chest and died in hospital days later. “There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think about him,” his older brother Wilfred Wong told reporters outside the courthouse. “It doesn’t feel quite like closure, but its a step in the process and were just thankful that through the system, the city will be safer,” he said. Findings of fact Following the verdict, Supreme Court Justice Catherine Wedge issued her findings of fact in the case. Wedge retired before sentencing, which was conducted by Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes. Based on the evidence presented at trial, Wedge found that Carter flew from the Toronto area to the Lower Mainland sometime around October 2017 to join a dial-a-dope drug dealing operation based out of a downtown Vancouver condo. She found the operation was led by Matthew Navas-Rivas, a friend and associate of Carter’s, and that Carter worked in a “middle management role.” Wedge found that on the night of the offences, Jan. 13, 2018, Carter called one of the operation’s drug runners, who was driving a Pontiac Montana van some distance away, and told him to return the vehicle immediately. According to Wedge’s findings, when the employee returned the van, Carter drove it to Broadway and Ontario Street, parked it southeast of the intersection and sat alone inside the vehicle for 38 minutes until the events unfolded. Wedge found that, across Broadway, Navas-Rivas and his girlfriend were dining at Indochine Restaurant. She found that Navas-Rivas was distracted and upset because a friend had been killed earlier that day, and that he spent much of the time in the restaurant’s bathroom using an encrypted phone to speak with unknown people. At about 9:16 p.m., Wedge found, Navas-Rivas told his girlfriend there were people outside and that they needed to leave. They flagged down a taxi just before 9:17 p.m. At that moment, Whiteside emerged from down the street and opened fire at Navas-Rivas and his girlfriend, who escaped uninjured in the cab. Wedge found that when Whiteside opened fire, Carter turned on the headlights of the van and fired his own gun at Whiteside, striking him in the head and leg. Whiteside died almost immediately. Wedge also found that, while the shots were being fired, Wong, who was in the back seat of his parents’ car as the family drove through the intersection, was struck in the chest by one of Carter’s bullets. According to Wedge’s findings, Carter immediately left the scene and drove back to his rental condo in Surrey. She found that he changed his cellphone number the following day and flew back to Toronto a week later. Carter was eventually arrested in March 2022 as he was leaving a federal prison in Ontario, where he had been serving a sentence for firearms offences, and was returned to British Columbia. Police took it personally Insp. Mike Heard of the Vancouver Police Department was the officer in charge of the extensive investigation, on which he says around 60 officers worked. “I think senseless gun violence impacts our community; it kind of shakes us to our core,” Heard said. “I think when it comes to people enjoying the city and enjoying their day to day lives and someone that’s involved in a senseless violent outcome, I think it’s hard as an investigator and as a human being not to take it personally,” he said. Heard said he hopes the conviction and sentence will deter those entrenched in a criminal lifestyle from committing similar acts. “We’ll use any kind of investigative resource we have to get some kind of closure and charges and ensuring that these people are brought to justice,” he said. Carter speaks Carter made a brief statement in court, though he did not admit guilt. “No matter my viewpoint on the verdict of this trial, I will not even be remotely close to feeling the horrific anguish that Mrs. Chelly Chan and Samson Wong, Alfred’s parents, as well as the rest of his family wake up to every day,” he said, in part. “It’s the highest level of pain one can endure, I imagine.” With credit for time served in pre-trial custody, Carter will be eligible to apply for parole in 2039.
