Police are investigating another extortion-related shooting in Surrey, B.C., on Wednesday, marking at least the fourth such incident in the city in the past two weeks.
Officers responded to reports of shots fired at a strip mall in the 8000 block of King George Boulevard at approximately 2:10 a.m., the Surrey Police Service said in a statement. Once on scene, investigators located a business that had been damaged in the gunfire.
Bullet holes were visible in the windows of the Bhojan Sweets and Restaurant, which remained behind police tape Wednesday with evidence markers littering the parking lot.
“Fortunately, nobody was in the business or injured at the time of the shooting,” Surrey police Sgt. Tige Pollock told reporters outside the restaurant.
Authorities are still working to confirm the motive for the attack but it appears to be related to the ongoing string of extortions plaguing the city and the neighbouring communities of Langley and Delta.
Pollock said the restaurant targeted in Wednesday’s shooting had been threatened in the past.
Surrey police investigators have deployed “overt and covert resources” in an attempt to crack down on the violence, and are working with the B.C. Extortion Task Force to protect residents and businesses, Pollock said.
Just two weeks into the year, Surrey is already on track to surpass the number of extortions and extortion-related shootings it recorded in 2025.
According to Surrey police data, there were 16 cases of extortion in the city in the first twelve days of 2026, with three of those attempts involving shootings.
Last year, the city recorded a total of 132 extortion attempts, including 49 shootings. The Surrey police counted 88 victims of extortion attempts in 2025. So far this year, between Jan. 1 and Jan. 12, there have been 12 extortion victims, including 10 repeat victims from 2025, according to police.
“We are working very hard to solve these issues,” Pollock said. “We do believe that, traditionally, this was an underreported phenomenon for a variety of reasons.”
Violent extortion is an attractive proposition for gang members, who see view it as a relatively “low investment for potentially high reward,” according to a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University.
“Historically, gangs have been involved in extortion-based sort of activities,” Prof. Bryan Kinney told CTV News Wednesday.
“(The) old-school Mafia, the Hells Angels would do shakedowns, but it’s more personal coming up to your shop. Now we’re just seeing a technology change, I think, where you can use social media to send the initial threats.”
Anyone with information about the shooting, including CCTV or dashcam video, is asked to call the Surrey Police Service’s non-emergency line at 604-599-0502, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
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