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July 27, 2022 • 48 minutes ago • 3 minutes read • 5 comments Police are investigating the killing of Ripudaman Singh Malik on July 14, 2022. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG
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The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team says they have been charged in the July 14 murder of controversial Surrey businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik.
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Malik, who was acquitted of manslaughter charges in the 1985 Air India bombing, was shot dead as he arrived at his business in an industrial complex at 8236 128th Street.
Tanner Fox, 21, and Jose Lopez, 23, are charged with first-degree murder.
Both are due to appear in Surrey County Court today.
Both have faced violent crime charges long before Malik’s murder.
Tanner Fox in 2019 Abbotsford Police Photo Abbotsford Police Photo
Lopez was charged in Kelowna last summer with nine criminal charges, including possession of a firearm with ammunition, pointing a gun, violating a court order to possess firearms and resisting arrest. The matter was sent from the Provincial Court to the Supreme Court last October.
Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for the BC Prosecution Service, said Wednesday that Lopez will appear in court on the weapons charges in November with a trial date in Kelowna on Dec. 5.
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“He was ordered released on these charges on $5,000 cash bail with conditions on July 30, 2021,” McLaughlin said. “The BCPS opposed his release.”
Lopez was also convicted in September 2019 of assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon for an incident in Abbotsford a year earlier. He received an 18-month suspended sentence and a 10-year firearms ban.
Fox was convicted last April of resisting or obstructing a peace officer and sentenced to four days in jail.
He was convicted of assault causing bodily harm in connection with a November 2019 stabbing in Abbotsford and was sentenced to 119 days in jail as well as a 10-year firearms ban. And last fall, he was charged with aggravated assault in connection with the New Westminster incident. He was out on $500 bond at the time of Malik’s murder.
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Both young men have Abbotsford connections.
More details will be released this afternoon.
After the killing, IHIT released a strange video of a white Honda CRV driving through the parking area of the complex where Papillon is located about 80 minutes before the shooting. It looked like there was more than one person inside.
Investigators said the suspects were inside and were lying in wait for Malik, 75.
The Honda was found burning six blocks away shortly after the impact.
Malik was a single suspect in the Air India bombing linked to the Sikh separatist movement. He was acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges in March 2005.
The divisive figure was also a founder of the Khalsa Credit Union and the Satnam Education Society, which runs several independent schools and receives funding from the BC government.
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Malik used the school’s letterhead to write to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January, offering his support and thanking Modi for trying to address outstanding issues related to the treatment of Sikhs.
Some criticized Malik for the letter, in which he also expressed his support for a united India in contrast to his earlier separatist stance.
Police said after the killing that no motive had been determined and that the IHIT has “a number of avenues of investigation available to us.
“Postmedia has spoken to more than a dozen people who know Malik or have worked on the investigation into the June 23, 1985 Air India bombing that left 329 dead.
No one believed Malik’s murder, which everyone described as shocking, had anything to do with the terror plot 37 years ago.
MORE TO COME…
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