Canada - Rock Machine gangsters mourn loss of Edmonton 'brother'

OFF THE WIRE
Source: edmontonsun.com
By JEFF CUMMINGS, Edmonton Sun

Edmonton’s latest homicide victim was a 31-year-old father of two who was involved with a notorious motorcycle gang once in a bloody war with the Hells Angels, the Edmonton Sun has learned.




Andrew Block – who had strong ties to the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club – was fatally gunned down sometime before police found his body sitting in the front passenger seat of a truck parked in a residential area near 127 Street and 116 Avenue Tuesday afternoon.



The apparent gangland slaying was Edmonton’s 25th homicide of the year.



Block, who also went by the names Andy Rock and Blaklistid, was a hip-hop musician linked to the Rock Machine’s Nomads Canada chapter.



The Rock Machine is an outlaw biker gang that was involved in a deadly turf war with the Hells Angels in Montreal in the 1990s.



The gang created a memorial page on its website at RockMachine.ca, which identifies Block as a “brother.”



“It is with heavy hearts that all of the Nova Scotia Rock Machine Full Patches, prospects, hang arounds, and supporters send our thoughts, prayers and condolences for the loss of Brother Andy Rock,” wrote one member on the site’s guest book.



“(He was) taken from us too soon. Ride on and rest in peace, brother.”



The war between the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels lasted for eight years and resulted in 160 deaths in Quebec, including two prison guards and several innocent victims.



Biker gangs are suspected of controlling most of the drug trade in Canada, says Grant MacEwan criminologist Bill Pitt.



However, that’s not the case with the Rock Machine anymore, since the gang is no longer a big player in Canada’s gang world after losing ground to rivals, he said.



“They are peripheral players,” Pitt said. “They are attempting to play in the bigger leagues, perhaps trying to catch on with the more legitimate gangsters.



“Any gangs that get wiped out, they move on, but they hang on to the name.”



Police found Block sitting in a black, four-door truck that was parked on a garage parking pad. There was a small hole in the passenger seat below the headrest.



Detectives are still investigating the homicide that, so far, hasn’t resulted in arrests.



“(This homicide) was a settling of accounts,” said Pitt.



“This could have been an account from a bad business deal.”



Block was convicted of manslaughter back in 2001 after Victor Chalifoux, 25, was killed by a stray bullet during a house party in Sept. 25, 2000. Chalifoux was sleeping when he was hit by the bullet when two teenage girls and two men in the home at 10219A 155 St., started passing around a .30-calibre pistol at 4 a.m.



jeff.cummings@sunmedia.ca



The Rock Machine Motorcycle Club — Who are they?
• The Rock Machine Motorcycle Club was formed in Montreal in 1986 from an alliance of Quebec drug dealers fending off the Hells Angels, which was vying for a monopoly of the province’s lucrative drug trade.
• The Rock, with its red-and-gold-eagle logo, gained notoriety in the ‘90s thanks to a bloody turf war with the Hells that killed an innocent Montreal boy. Daniel Desrochers, 11, was playing in a schoolyard when he was struck in the head by shrapnel from a nearby car bomb in 1995. The people of Montreal took to the streets, demanding the government and police do more to stop the violence and within a few years most of the ringleaders were in prison or in hiding.

• In 2008, the club patched over to the U.S.-based Bandidos, a club decimated by the 2006 massacre of eight outlaw bikers in Ontario.
• After a nearly eight-year hiatus, the Rock resurfaced in 2008 with chapters in Toronto, Kingston, Edmonton and Winnipeg.
• The Rock Machine’s official website lists chapters in Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec.
• “We are an old-school club with an old-school attitude, we give what we get,” says a statement on the website.
— Source: QMI Agency, http://www.rockmachine.ca/
Andrew (Andy) Arthur Block — Who was he?
• Edmonton-based member of the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club’s Nomads
• DJ known as Blaklistid
• Father of two
• 1997 graduate of Spruce Grove Composite High School
• Born on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17), 1979
• Favourite quote (as posted on his Facebook page): “TALK SHIT GET HIT & TRUST NO 1.”
• Posting on his Facebook page: “TRUST NO 1. PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCO ROCK MACHINE MOTORCYCLE CLUB WORLD WIDE...!!!”