Canadian gangster shot dead in Starbucks

In an incident of gang-related violence, a Canadian man with a history of drug trafficking was murdered in Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit on Saturday morning.

Having just ordered a coffee at the Starbucks in the Paradise Plaza shopping mall, Thomas Gisby, 47, was shot twice at close range by one of two armed men on April 28, around 9 a.m.

According to witnesses, two assailants approached Gisby and one opened fire with a Magnum 44., hitting him in the abdomen and the scruff of the neck. They then fled the scene, escaping in a gold Volkswagen Jetta.

A criminal kingpin in Canada, Gisby was convicted for smuggling cocaine in 1991 and again for tax evasion and fraud in 2005. He had links with several Mexican drug-trafficking organizations and ran what police called the “Gisby Crime Group.”

“He ha[d] networks internationally to be able to bring illegal commodities into Canada for distribution,” said Chief Superintendent Dan Malo of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “These organized crime targets have no boundaries and the police are going to be paying particular attention to this group here in the foreseeable future to see what impact [the murder] has.”

Gisby is also believed to have been a member of Vancouver’s notorious Dhak Group, one of Canada’s most powerful criminal gangs. The Dhak Group has been targeted in retaliatory hits ever since Jonathan Bacon of the Red Scorpion gang was murdered in Kelowna, British Columbia, last summer.

After narrowly avoiding assassination in Canada earlier this year, Gisby fled to Mexico in fear of further retribution. He had been living in a motorhome near Whistler, B.C. when he was targeted in a car bombing in January, surviving with only minor injuries.

Gisby became a resident of the Green Bay Condominium complex on Nuevo Vallarta’s El Tigre golf course. Located in the Banderas Bay, Nuevo Vallarta is a Pacific Coast resort a few miles north of Puerto Vallarta.