RCMP deal with deaths
Three murders hit Langley in 2012, all of people with criminal records
A Langley Township firefighter checked out the aftermath of a fire that destroyed the scene of a double murder over the summer.
Photograph by: Langley Advance , files
Langley saw three homicides in 2011, all of them shootings.
Korey Tyler Kelly became the first mur-der victim of the year when he was shot and killed, apparently while trying to break into a marijuana grow operation in South Aldergrove on March 9. a marijuana grow operation in South Aldergrove on March 9.
Kelly, who had a long criminal record, was killed near 16th Avenue and 272nd Street.
Police investigators said that Kelly and two other men were involved in the attempted theft, known as a "grow rip."
Kelly was found about a mile away from where the shooting took place, when two men flagged down police officers near 24th Avenue.
While the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) looked into the killing, Langley RCMP seized 600 marijuana plants and arrested a 27year-old from Abbotsford and a 21-yearold Surrey man.
Police said they had persons of interest identified in the shooting, but there had been no charges by the end of the year.
In the early summer, a double murder resulted from a melee of some sort in an empty Milner farmhouse.
On June 24, two men were shot to death there.
Gordon Spencer, 27, died at the scene, and 25year-old Bruce Mayo, died in hospital.
The incident was reported to police at 2: 30 a.m. as a domestic dispute. The officers who arrived found the two men with gunshot wounds, and four more men and a young woman inside a home thick with bear spray.
Both murder victims had criminal records, but police did not say if they thought the crime was linked to gangs or the drug trade.
The mystery of the killings deepend in mid-July when the house where the violence had taken place burned in a suspicious fire.
Much of the home was destroyed and the roof collapsed.
Police said they had finished their investigation of the scene and no evidence was lost, and Langley RCMP opened an investigation into a possible arson.
