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Friday, May 31, 2013
www.nsnews.com
NV woman not guilty of kidnapping
Firefighters douse blaze in train tunnel Brent Richter
brichter@nsnews.com
FIREFIGHTERS had to head into a train tunnel to put out the flames of a burning homeless camp Wednesday afternoon.
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Multiple 9-1-1 calls came in around 3:30 p.m., reporting thick black smoke coming from the train tunnel at the foot of Chesterfield Avenue. “Multiple units, both from North Van city and North Van district attended. We had a crew go in and they located a fire approximately 100 metres into the tunnel,” said city fire chief Dan Pistilli. “It was a mattress and some discarded rubbish, some sleeping bags. It was a bit of a camp they had set up.” Firefighters searched the area but the bed’s owner was nowhere around and there were no reported injuries. First responders had to evacuate the nearby ICBC office building and 171 West Esplanade and shut down the road for about two hours while crews mopped up. “It was a bit of mayhem for a bit,” Pistilli said. While not every person sleeping on the streets wants to stay in a shelter, outreach workers would have liked to have given the option to whoever was calling the CN Rail tunnel home, according to Linda Fox, manager of the Lookout homeless shelter. “Our shelter is always full. We run at about 104 per cent capacity,” Fox said, “But if a person is willing to come . . . we will make a way for it to happen. We’re not going to leave someone outside. We’re going to figure something out.” Getting off the streets and into a shelter is often the first step to getting connected with a range of services and finding permanent housing, Fox said.
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Judge says no evidence ties Nazfar Mirhadi to extortion plot Jane Seyd jseyd@nsnews.com
A former North Vancouver real estate agent has been found not guilty of involvement in a high-profile kidnapping case.
NEWS photo Paul McGrath
CITY of North Vancouver firefighters plan their attack as smoke billows out from the west end of the train tunnel at the foot of Chesterfield Avenue Wednesday afternoon. Esplanade traffic was blocked off from Lonsdale to Chesterfield and some buildings were evacuated. Scan with Layar for video.
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Nazfar Victoria Mirhadi was acquitted in B.C. Supreme Court Wednesday of all charges against her. One other woman, Veronica Moncur was also acquitted while the five men charged in the case were found guilty of unlawful confinement. In her ruling, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce said the evidence showed Mirhadi acted as the go-between in a moneylaundering deal involving kidnap victim Sulaiman Safi. But she said there was nothing that proved Mirhadi was involved in or knew about a plot to kidnap Safi and extort money from him. Bruce wrote that while Mirhadi was aware Safi would have “serious problems” if he failed to return her clients’ money that had gone missing “there is little evidence to suggest Mirhadi knew of a plan to kidnap him or was willfully blind to such a plan.” Bruce wrote it was just as likely that another woman — Mirhadi’s original contact in the money laundering scheme — had tipped off the kidnappers to Safi’s whereabouts on the day he was hustled out of a restaurant in Vancouver’s West End and into a waiting vehicle. During the trial, Crown prosecutors said Mirhadi first met Safi to discuss financing of real estate properties. But soon they were discussing a plan to launder $400,000 for one of Mirhadi’s associates. After most of that cash was seized by police while being transported in a taxicab, Mirhadi demanded her money back and arranged to meet Safi at a restaurant. There, a man approached their table and asked Safi to speak with him privately in his “office.” But instead, the man led Safi outside, where he was shoved into an SUV, handcuffed and driven to another location. Testifying by video link during the trial, Safi — who is serving an 81-month jail sentence for drug trafficking in California — described being taken to a small windowless room and threatened with torture and death as his captors demanded that he repay hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of his captors brought out a Glock handgun and pressed it to his head at one point, telling him, “These guys want the money now or you’re going to die today.” After eventually convincing his captors that he had a plan to get the money back, Safi was released from the industrial area of Richmond where he had been held. By that time, police — who had been tipped to a possible kidnapping — had already set up surveillance on the alleged kidnappers. Six people — not including Mirhadi — were arrested soon after, in vehicles leaving the scene. Following the verdict this week, Matthew Nathanson, Mirhadi’s See 5 page 3
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