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A young Richmond girl was spirited away to Vancouver Island for protection after her gangster father and the family received death threats from two contract killers well known to police, according to a family law court ruling.

The girl, four years old at the time, was accompanied by her grandmother and was hidden away with a succession of friends and relatives until the threat had been investigated by police and child protection services officials.

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B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robin Baird said that what caught his attention was the readiness with which the dad, a “self-proclaimed” gangster who is only identified by his initials in the judge’s ruling, accepted the threats to be genuine and the immediacy and urgency of his fear.

“The Vancouver police gang squad considered the threats to be highly credible and I think they were right,” said the judge.

“For a number of harrowing weeks, in other words, the respondent’s dangerous lifestyle and violent associations created a fugitive of his own daughter.”