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Ferguson, who had just turned 18 several months earlier, told Witness X he was working for an older guy and there was a lot of money to be made by going to Western Canada to do contracts, by which he meant killing people for money, said the prosecutor.

The accused told Witness X that the work would be “quick and easy.” Witness X never learned the name of the man who recruited Ferguson, said Barrenger.

The two men bought Greyhound bus tickets to come to Vancouver and travelled west in March 2015. They were initially provided with $4,000 and over the next three months periodically given more money by persons the Crown cannot identify, said Barrenger.

Ferguson told Witness X that their Lower Mainland contacts were members of something called the UN, an apparent reference to the UN gang, and that the “hits” they were going to carry out were part of an ongoing gang conflict in the Vancouver area.

After being in Vancouver for several weeks, he told Witness X that they could make $200,000 by killing a person at the airport.

Ferguson obtained firearms — two handguns and a silencer — in a meeting with two men in an alley near the YMCA in downtown Vancouver — and later tested the guns in an alley near the motel where they were staying. He was provided with a replacement firearm after one of the handguns failed to work, as well as a long robe of the kind typically worn by some Muslim women as a disguise he was to wear during the airport hit.

In a video played in court, Ferguson can be seen sitting at a table in the airport food court behind and to the right of Ryan and then standing up, looking around and putting his hand into a purse containing the firearms. He walked directly behind Ryan and UN gang associate Thomas Duong, who was seated with Ryan and whose job had been to set up the Hells Angel, and pointed a gun at the back of Ryan’s head, pulling the trigger, said Barrenger.