Man charged with three murders

Martin van den Hemel, Staff Reporter

A 37-year-old Surrey man charged with three murders and being investigated for a fourth remained expressionless during a brief Richmond provincial court appearance Tuesday morning.

Wearing an unbuttoned pin-striped casual shirt, Charles Kembo, who stands five feet eight inches tall and is of East African descent, gave no hint by his demeanour as to the severity of the charges against him.

Kembo was arrested by the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team on Friday following a complex investigation that lasted 10 months and remains ongoing.

He is charged with the first-degree murder of his Ladner girlfriend, Sui Yin (Elvie) Ma, whose body was found in a hockey duffel bag last November in a slough near the George Massey Tunnel, as well as another murder which occurred in Richmond last week but was undisclosed to the public for investigative reasons.

Kembo allegedly killed 21-year-old Rita Yeung on July 24, just days before her body was pulled from the Fraser River off Sea Island last Wednesday.

Yeung’s biological mother, Richmond’s Margaret Kembo, was Kembo’s wife and she was reported missing in October 2002. But her body has never been found. Charles Kembo, who also goes by the alias Charles Gwazah, is now charged with the first-degree murder of Margaret Kembo.

RCMP Cpl. Tom Seaman said Kembo has apparently been in Canada since the late 1980s and his official status is unknown, although he is not a Canadian citizen.

Kembo has been linked to addresses in Vancouver and Surrey and police are now searching for other aliases he may have lived under to see whether he may have committed other unsolved crimes elsewhere in Canada, sources indicate.

Kembo lived with a woman and two or three children in a Surrey condominium complex at 14377 103 Ave. according to the building caretaker.

Police raided the fourth-floor suite last week, according to Tom, who asked that his last name not be printed.

“Some people next door heard some screaming,” he said.

He said the “tall lady” and the other residents of the suite had moved in recently and mostly kept to themselves.

On Wednesday, a two-man crew was preparing to replace the damaged door, which had suffered a punched-out door lock and showed what appeared to be the marks of a police battering ram.

Police are also closely scrutinizing Kembo for the November 2003 murder of Vancouver’s Ardon Samuel, 38. Samuel was Kembo’s business partner, although investigators aren’t saying what line of work they were in. That investigation is ongoing and charges have not yet been laid.

But Seaman said “other ongoing criminal activity” including frauds, are somehow linked to these murders.

In addition to the regional murder investigative team, other agencies including the Richmond RCMP, Vancouver Police Department’s homicide unit, Delta Police and the RCMP E Division commercial crime section have been involved.

Seaman would not say whether Kembo was under police surveillance at the time of Yeung’s murder, saying only that he has been under “police scrutiny at various times.”

While investigating the disappearance of Kembo’s wife and Sui Yin Ma, police learned of a possible third murder and were eventually able to locate Kembo and arrest him.

Police are asking for the public’s help in establishing a timeline for the disappearance of Margaret Kembo and want anyone with information to contact them at 604-543-9217 or 1-877-543-9217, or CrimeStoppers at 604-669-8477.

Details of how the three women were killed aren’t being released as police want to “protect the integrity and continuance of the investigation and resulting prosecution.”

Kembo remains in custody and is next scheduled to appear in Richmond provincial court on Thursday, Aug. 18.

–with files from Dan Ferguson

Truck driver does drive-thru, then hit-and-run

Martin van den Hemel, Staff Reporter

When Darrel Seskin returned to his Juniper Gate home with his wife and twin teenage boys Friday night, what greeted him was more than shocking.

“I actually thought there was an explosion in the house,” Seskin told The Richmond Review.

The crumbled remains of a wall from inside his home were scattered on his lawn, windows were smashed, his garage and office pulverized.

And his neighbours were stumbling out of their homes around the time he arrived home Friday around 11:30 p.m., just minutes after the incident.

He later learned that it wasn’t an explosion, but rather a Dodge Ram pickup truck driven by a teenager that had smashed into his home.

But the truck was nowhere in sight because the driver put it in reverse shortly after the crash—dragging the interior walls out onto the lawn, giving the impression there had been an explosion—and fled the scene.

“He went into the house and managed to back out of it.”

On any other night at about that time, Seskin is convinced someone would likely have been using his office computer, and had they been sitting at that desk in his office, they surely would have been killed.

Seskin said the black truck suffered serious front-end damage and a broken axle and broke down about a half kilometre from his home.

The driver then fled on foot, but police used a dog team and eventually nabbed a 19-year-old suspect who only had the vehicle for a couple of months.

Another accident a couple of years ago in which a vehicle slammed into his neighbour’s hedge is a further cause for concern, and Seskin said he plans to call the City of Richmond to see what measures can be taken before someone is killed.

Seskin suspects that drivers are overshooting the road and then making a last-minute turn that is too late.

Police have recommended charges against the driver.

Ailing girl will get flight paid for

Martin van den Hemel, Staff Reporter

A B.C. Children’s Hospital spokesperson says an ailing two-year-old girl will be financially supported when she flies to Toronto for life-saving surgery.

Gabrielle Friedman has a blood pressure disorder and needs a vital surgery that will be performed at Toronto Children’s Hospital later this year.

Gabrielle’s mother Stacey Friedman contacted The Richmond Review last week after learning the province’s Medical Services Plan will not pay for her daughter’s flight to Toronto.

After reading Saturday’s front page story, Richmond truck driver and parent Mike Budge was among several people who stepped forward to foot the flight bill.

“If this has to be done, if money is holding this up, I want to pay for it,” Budge said.

Stacey Friedman said she was moved by the generous gesture, but noted that the cost of Gabrielle’s flight won’t bankrupt the family. She believes this is an issue of principle and worries about other families faced with similar circumstances and who are already struggling to make ends meet.

“I want the taxpayers to know that this is what’s happened to our health care system,” Friedman said, adding that she will have to pay for her own flight, accommodations and meals in order to be at her daughter’s side for the two weeks to a month she may be in hospital.

But B.C. Children’s Hospital spokesperson Marisa Nichini assured The Richmond Review that the Friedman family will be financially supported.

“This family will be supported...when their child goes out of province to receive further care.”

As to providing assistance for Stacey to accompany Gabrielle: “She hasn’t had a chance, I don’t think, to meet with anybody from our social work group and that’s where there are other sources that aren’t necessarily government sources of funding.”

Friedman has received phone calls from others offering help, but she said she’d turned that down. She didn’t contact the paper for financial assistance, but rather to bring the issue to the public’s attention.

“At one time we used to boast about the Canadian medical system,” she said, noting that she was never told about the procedure and therefore urges other parents to be true advocates for their children.

Friedman says she’s aware of three other children in B.C. who could benefit from a newly developed procedure that could make a life-altering difference for children suffering from portal vein thrombosis. Children with this condition have abnormally high blood pressure in the blood vessels leading to the liver.

A Chicago surgeon offered to teach the new technique—which has a greater than 95-per-cent success rate—to doctors at B.C. Children’s Hospital. Nichini said doctors at B.C. Children’s are currently working on arranging schedules to enable that Chicago surgeon to demonstrate the procedure for other surgeons to see locally.

The procedure will see a shunt placed in Gabrielle’s gastro-intestinal system which should address the clot that is resulting in low blood flow to her liver and has caused her spleen to swell.

Whenever Gabrielle is overcome by a fever of 101°F, the ailment places her in danger of falling into a coma. With the frequency that young children get feverish, this has meant she’s been in and out of hospital all of her young life, Friedman said.

Without the procedure, Gabrielle’s life could be in danger should a blood vessel form near the surface of her esophagus, which could then burst and result in Gabrielle bleeding out.

Pounding of hearts

Matthew Hoekstra , Staff Reporter

•Heartbeat

•Until Aug. 28 at The Centre, 777 Homer St., Vancouver

•Tickets at 604-699-8888 and www.centretix.com

A pair of Richmond musicians is easing a little circulation into a stage production with no problem producing a pulse.

Heartbeat, Dr. Dennis Law’s latest attempt at pumping life into the region’s theatre scene, stormed onto the stage at The Centre for Performing Arts in Vancouver Tuesday after suffering a two-week delay courtesy of the container trucking dispute. Somehow the sets, props and costumes found their way to the theatre for a Broadway schedule.

The rhythmic and colourful show centred on Chinese drumming is here for a month before moving to Toronto, promising audiences of all cultures a theatrical performance like no other.

With help from a huge cast of nearly 65 dancers, martial artists and musicians, the young protagonist Jade clutches a simple storyline while being guided through 2,000 years of Chinese history told in seven acts.

Similar to Law’s last “action musical” Terracotta Warriors, the basic story allows the show’s strengths to come out—colour, sight and sound.

Weaving melody into an evening of Chinese percussion and performers appearing in over 500 costumes are three musicians classically trained in traditional Chinese music. While most of the performers have a helluva commute from Beijing, China, two musicians only have to cross a bridge.

Panda Liu arrived in Canada in 1999 with her pipa and 30 years of experience on the four-string instrument. Two years later Wen Ying Chen also settled in Richmond with her gu zheng, a 21-string wooden instrument, which she also has 30 years experience with. A third musician, Jian Ming Pan, plays the dizi, a Chinese bamboo flute.

Chen, 42, graduated from a music academy in China, worked as a music professor in China and is also an award-winning soloist. Liu, who says she’s a “little” older than her colleague, also received classical music training and taught music in China.

Liu and Chen are keeping traditional Chinese music alive in their new country by teaching from their Richmond homes. Both take pride in being “ambassadors” of the art form and helping stimulate cultural pride among Chinese Canadians.

“(Chinese immigrants) would be proud to have the chance to see Chinese here and from their homeland co-operating at such a high level,” Liu says through a translator.

Traditional Chinese music, which is based on folk melodies, is sharply different from Western music, which is focused on many instruments in harmony for a full sound. And although the show is nothing but traditional Chinese, it’s aimed at a wider audience.

“The effect (Chinese music) has on the audience, regardless of cultural background is the same. If it sounds good, it sounds good,” says Liu.

Law, who not only owns The Centre, but is producer, writer and director of Heartbeat, seems to be on track in his efforts to give audiences a vividly different theatre experience since purchasing the theatre and putting his career as a physician on hold over three years ago.

Apart from presenting a few Broadway shows, Law has produced a number of his own “action-musicals,” in which he’s scored extra technical points for an avant-garde approach to showcasing Chinese art forms.

Of Heaven & Earth had 26 performances in 2002 and Terracotta Warriors did 72 shows last year.

This year, he’s taken it a step farther, creating what he calls the first annual Chinese Performing Arts Festival in Canada. Its two summer shows, Heartbeat and predecessor Senses, will combine for more than 100 performances in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.

“This one is our fourth one, which is going to be very rhythmic, very stimulating, very gyrating. As I bill it, it will rock you,” says Law. “A musical that goes from beginning to end with a lot of percussion and vividly strenuous dance routine and martial arts routine.”

Since owning the theatre, he’s wanted to showcase Chinese performing arts at an international level. That’s required importing artists from Beijing.

But since this show features two short scenes of spoken English, he needed two actors of Chinese descent who knew the language. He found them in Vancouver. Law has also now discovered the wealth of “first-rate” musicians in Canada who have emigrated from China—plucking Chen and Liu from Richmond for the show.

“I was thrilled to have local Chinese artists participate, not only because it saves me the grief of getting visas and exporting from China...it’s perfectly great to use local immigrated talent,” he says.

In the last 100 years, the development of percussion music in China fell behind the West thanks to a 20th century filled with cultural turmoil. To showcase the vast capability of Chinese percussion today, he assembled 100 instruments and six percussionists for Heartbeat.

Says Law: “There’s really a tremendously rich tradition of percussion and drum music that essentially makes it much more dramatic and (has more impact) than things like jazz drums.”