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The Abbotsford Police Department's new gang suppression unit debuted with a Top-10 hit Friday after taking down a well-known Fraser Valley gangster. Lance William Wust, 35, was arrested Friday morning along with another man in a black Ford pickup truck after a drug warrant executed on Wust's residence in the 36000 block of Old Yale Road turned up a loaded gun, cash and drugs.
APD spokesperson Const. Ian MacDonald said the arrest was "huge." Police seized a loaded 40mm Glock, several thousand dollars in cash, two sets of body armour, gun ammo and hundreds of Oxycontin capsules.
Even though the department has not officially released its Top-10 list of Abbotsford's most wanted gangsters, MacDonald said Wust would have been on it.
After spending the last two years in Kelowna, Wust made his first public appearance in town Tuesday night at a Sumas Road restaurant getting into a fight with a rival group after he declared " 'I'm running the show in Abbotsford,'" MacDonald said.
"He wasn't terribly secretive about being in town or his intentions once he was here, and he shared those with the people in the restaurant as well as with our members.
"He's not a low-profile guy."
Provincial court documents show Wust has been involved with criminal activity since he was a young adult and had connections to the late Bindy Johal - a notorious Indo-Canadian organized crime figurehead in the Lower Mainland in the 90s who was killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head while dancing at a Vancouver nightclub on Dec. 20, 1998.
Wust's run-ins with law enforcement predates the Red Scorpions, Independent Soldiers and United Nations gang and police don't consider him tied to any one particular gang, MacDonald said.
"He's either been associated with name brand criminal associations, or in conflict with them for most of his adult life," he said.
MacDonald said Wust making it known he was re-establishing himself in Abbotsford would only antagonize his enemies.
"No one is rolling out the welcome mat [for Wust]," he said.
Because organized crime does not divide into neat, demarcated lines of allegiance, MacDonald said criminals often don't align themselves with just one organization.
"A guy sitting at a UN gang table for lunch could easily be sitting at Red Scorpion table for dinner and be having a late-night meeting with the Independent Soldiers and the next day be meeting with the Hell's Angels.
"That's the way this world works, it's not like the Crips and the Bloods," MacDonald said.
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