The Hongcouver | Innocent Alfred Wong, doomed by the cruel geometry of a moving car, a stray bullet and Vancouver’s gang warfare

On one of Vancouver’s busiest streets, the world of Alfred Wong – a boy of 15 riding home in the back seat of his parents’ car – and that of a nameless man carrying a gun would intersect with heartless and random precision.

Alfred’s world was swimming practice, church, his family, video games, and school at Pinetree Secondary in Coquitlam. He planned to work as a lifeguard and an electronic engineer.

What little is known about the world of the gunman stalking down Broadway with presumably deadly intent that night revolves around Vancouver’s drug trade and an increasingly brutal gang war.

It was unlikely that the vectors of their lives would ever have crossed, but at 9.30pm on Saturday, January 13, as Alfred and his parents drove home after meeting his elder brother for dinner, they would do so in a millisecond of cruel geometry.

The bullet was never meant for Alfred. It found him nevertheless, passing through his parents’ car and striking him in the chest as the Wongs drove oblivious through the evening traffic, past restaurants and outdoor equipment stores and a deadly gun battle.