Charges — Kamloops, B.C.

One of the Two Men Now Charged Was Already Serving Life for a Killing He Committed Three Weeks Later, and the Victim Was the Only Person in the File With No Connection to Anything: Kamloops RCMP Charge Hugh McIntosh and Brandon Fiddick in the 2019 Death of Rex Gill (September 19, 2026)

KAMLOOPS — Two men have been charged with second-degree murder in a shooting the RCMP has described for seven years as gang violence that hit the wrong man. One of them has been in a federal penitentiary that entire time, serving life for a murder he committed twenty-three days after Rex Gill was shot.

The Charge

Hugh Alexander McIntosh, 58, and Brandon Dale Fiddick, 34, are jointly charged with second-degree murder in the death of Rex Gill, 41, of Penticton. The charges were laid on Friday, September 18, 2026. Both men were arrested on Saturday, September 19 and detained by a judicial justice. First appearances have not been scheduled.

Second degree, not first. The RCMP release does not explain the choice, and on a file police have consistently called targeted and organized-crime-linked, the absence of a planning-and-deliberation count is the single most consequential unexplained detail in the announcement.

The Morning of January 23, 2019

Gill was shot outside the former Comfort Inn and Suites on Rogers Place, in the Aberdeen area of Kamloops, shortly before 8:30 a.m. He was taken to Royal Inland Hospital and died there.

Roughly ninety minutes earlier, Cody Mathieu, 31, had been shot dead at the Super 8 motel in Valleyview, across the city. The RCMP says investigators believe the two shootings were directly linked, and the two investigations were subsequently combined under the Kamloops RCMP Serious Crime Unit.

Mathieu was known to police for involvement in the Kamloops drug trade. No charge has been laid in his death, and Saturday’s release does not say whether one is expected. Of the two men shot that morning, the one police have now charged over is the one with no criminal involvement at all.

The Man Who Was Already Inside

McIntosh is not being taken into custody so much as re-arrested inside it. He is already serving a life sentence for the February 15, 2019 shooting inside a Brocklehurst apartment that killed Jason Glover and seriously injured Kelly Callfas — a killing committed twenty-three days after Gill was shot on Rogers Place.

A jury convicted him in 2021 of first-degree murder and attempted murder. The B.C. Court of Appeal later reduced the murder conviction to second degree, and he was re-sentenced in 2024 to life with no parole eligibility for seventeen years, plus a concurrent twelve-year sentence for the attempted murder of Callfas.

Set the two files side by side and the sequence is worth stating plainly: on the RCMP’s own allegation, the man who shot Rex Gill in January went on to shoot two more people in February, was convicted for the February killing five years ago, and has been serving time for it while the January file sat open.

Fifty Investigators and a Burning Car

The two shootings prompted a response involving more than fifty investigators, including members of the RCMP’s gang task force. A white car seen near the Aberdeen hotel was found burning later the same day in Barnhartvale.

None of that appears in the 2026 release. The vehicle is not mentioned, no forensic or investigative development is described, and nothing published this weekend indicates what changed after seven years to produce a charge.

The Quotation

Superintendent Jeff Pelley, the officer in charge of the Kamloops detachment, called the arrests and charges “a tremendous accomplishment” by the detachment’s investigative teams, said the event “had a profound impact on the victim’s family and our community,” and described the outcome as a testament to the persistence of the Serious Crime Unit and those who contributed over the years.

Gill’s mother, Marie Nobles, told Castanet in January of this year that she remained hopeful: “It has been seven long years waiting for answers.”

What Is Still Not Reported

No RCMP file number. No date or mechanism for the investigative breakthrough. No stated reason for second-degree rather than first-degree murder. No named intended target. No status update on the Mathieu homicide beyond the absence of charges. No description of the firearm, the shooter’s vehicle beyond the 2019 reporting, or the role alleged against each of the two accused. No bail or first-appearance date for either man. No gang or criminal organization named by any police agency, in 2019 or in 2026.

Neither accused has entered a plea and none of these allegations has been tested in court.