Most feared gangsters in Edmonton, a high-ranking lieutenant in Redd Alert with the street name Crewboss.
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Most feared gangsters in Edmonton, a high-ranking lieutenant in Redd Alert with the street name Crewboss. Now he's a bedridden paraplegic living in a city hospital, the victim of a vicious swarming by his own gang that put him in a coma for weeks.
"For the past two years, he's just been lying here like this," says his older brother, Andrew Reid. "He's not getting any physical therapy. They told me he's too violent to work with, but look at him. What could he possibly do?" A spokesman for the hospital (the location won't be revealed for security reasons) was not able to explain yesterday why Sinclair has languished there for two and a half years, at an estimated cost of $1,400 per day. Sinclair's feet, legs and right arm are slowly bending and twisting as his muscles atrophy. He has only partial use of his left hand and he's subject to involuntary ticks and twitches. Reid, 51, who helped raise his brother, wants Sinclair to get some therapy so some day he will be well enough to move out of Edmonton, change his identity and start life over away from gangs.
"If we can get him in a wheelchair, we can take care of him," Reid said. "They could still come after him and finish him off." "I want to work," Sinclair says with a broad smile and thumbs-up. Reid gives Sinclair a hug. "He was such a happy kid, always smiling. And funny. He loved to laugh." Things began to unravel, Reid says, when Sinclair fell in with a rough crowd as a teenager. At age 22, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for aggravated assault for a fight in Boyle, 100 km north of Edmonton. He was sent to the maximum-security Edmonton Institution, home to some of the most dangerous criminals in Canada. "I knew it was going to be bad for him," Reid says. "I warned him. Keep your head down and stay away from the gangs."
Six years into his sentence, Sinclair called Reid to proudly tell him he had joined Redd Alert and was moving up the ranks. "He was really pleased with himself," Reid recalls. "Things just kept getting worse after that." In 2004, Sinclair was charged in connection with a brutal robbery of a 77-year-old man lured to a downtown apartment by a prostitute. Sinclair was accused of waiting at the apartment, then pulling a gun on the victim and smashing out his teeth with it until the man gave up his bank card and PIN number. Sinclair was in the Edmonton Remand Centre waiting for his trial on those charges in May 2006 when he was swarmed by up to 10 other Redd Alert members. Reid says they wanted to get rid of Sinclair because someone wanted to take over his position in the gang hierarchy. "He wanted out anyway," says Reid.
According to testimony at three of his attackers' trial, Sinclair got into a fight with Johnny Jacknife, another RA member. It was broken up but later flared up again in Sinclair's cell. Two more men joined in and Sinclair was knocked to the ground. Several others streamed into the cell and kicked him while he lay unconscious.
Sinclair was rushed to hospital, where he clung to life with a severe brain injury. He's been in hospitals ever since. The charges in connection with the robbery were stayed. "Now he's stuck here in limbo," Reid says. "Maybe if we can get him well enough, he can still make something of himself. All that time he spent in jail just made him angrier and more violent. He's not the same guy. He wants to do something good." "I was bad," Sinclair says, giving another thumbs-up. "I'm not any more."
