Mike on Crime

By Allison Jones, THE CANADIAN PRESS

WINGHAM, Ont. – The retired logger and avid hunter accused of gunning down an Ontario Provincial Police officer earlier this week died Thursday from wounds he received in a gunfight with police, as the officer’s family prepared to lay him to rest with full police honours.

Const. Vu Pham was shot and killed Monday after pulling over a pickup truck on a rural southwestern Ontario road. Fred Preston was then shot in an exchange of gunfire after another officer got to the scene near Wingham, Ont., north of London.

Preston was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in the death of Pham and attempted murder relating to the other officer.

The 70-year-old former reeve of Joly township in northern Ontario had been in critical condition in hospital since Monday. But on Thursday night he was taken off life support, said a family member who did not want to be identified.

The province’s Special Investigations Unit confirmed the death.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people who knew Pham at various stages of his life – as a young boy newly arrived in Canada, to his years as a dedicated father and police officer – flocked to a funeral home Thursday to pay their respects.

A steady stream of people lined up around the block at the visitation for the 37-year-old police officer and married father of three.

“It’s an overwhelming tragedy,” his adoptive brother Mike Thompson said outside the McBurney Funeral Home.

“Every day we wake up thinking we’re going to live to see the end of the day and our loved ones, we’re going to see them again and it’s going to be soon. You never anticipate that this is going to happen.”

Pham, originally from Vietnam, was taken in as a boy by Dan Thompson, a southwestern Ontario pastor who later moved to northern Ontario, where Pham and his three new siblings were raised. Though Pham was never officially adopted by the Thompsons, he was part of the family from the moment they took him in, Mike Thompson said.

“He became my brother and my hero.”

Thompson’s church in Elmira, Ont., had sponsored a family from Vietnam. The family turned out to be Pham – who by various recollections was between seven and nine at the time – along with his uncle Bing and someone they met in a refugee camp.

Pham’s uncle couldn’t support the boy, so a couple from the church took him in, but found they could not handle raising a boy who spoke no English. That’s when the Thompsons stepped in, Mike Thompson said.

Jeff Selby’s family had Pham and his uncle over for dinner their first night in Canada and served them hamburgers, he recalled. Selby knew Pham growing up and only recently met him again and discovered he was a police officer.

“I’m very proud of Vu for coming to Canada,” Selby said. “He lived the Canadian dream. He came to Canada with nothing and made something of himself.”

About 100 people were lined up for a visitation even before it began. Hundreds more people came to pay respects during a second visitation in the evening.

Inside, Pham’s wife and children were said to be holding up well, under the circumstances. Chief Supt. Ron Gentle of the Western region provincial police said Heather Pham is a “remarkable, strong woman” and that their kids – Tyler, 12, Jordan, 10, and Joshua, 7 – were being kept occupied for the time being.

“As always it’s when the crowds leave that we have to worry about them the most,” Gentle said. “I know the community and the detachment members and the members of the Wingham Police Service will be there to help out.”

The loss for the Ontario Provincial Police is a great one. Pham was the force’s 104th officer killed in the line of duty since its inception 100 years ago, but his absence will also be felt strongly in the community of Wingham, Gentle said.

“He was well-known here through hockey and soccer, an outdoorsman that enjoyed hunting and fishing with his children,” he said. “He was big in his church … He was part of the community. For 12 hours a day they loaned him to us to be an OPP officer and do his job.”

There will be a full police funeral for Pham on Friday, with thousands of officers expected to attend.

In what Thompson called a “remarkable coincidence,” Preston was from the small northern Ontario community of Sundridge where Pham and the Thompsons were raised. Sundridge is some 375 kilometres away from the scene of the shooting.

“That day that I found out we were talking about six degrees of separation and to find out that this is less than that – I know the (Preston) family well,” Thompson said. “They’re friends of ours. We bought a horse off of his daughter.”

Pham left Sundridge in his early 20s and Preston likely wouldn’t have made the connection between the boy he knew who attended the same church as he did and the 37-year-old police constable in Wingham, Preston’s friend Alvin Chapman said.

Preston’s brother told London radio station AM980 that Preston had been in denial about his wife Barbara’s infidelity until she recently admitted to having an affair.

Alex Preston said he spoke to his 70-year-old brother last Sunday.

“He talked about her unfaithfulness – she had finally admitted it but he never told me anything about what his plans were,” said Preston.

Published reports have said Preston went to his ex-wife’s home in southern Ontario with a rifle shortly before Pham was mortally wounded. But his brother said Preston knew his wife was staying at a women’s shelter in North Bay, Ont., and that one of Preston’s daughters lived near where the shooting took place.

“He was looking after his daughter’s animals back at the farm – and he was alone that night – that was a bad thing, he got thinking I guess.”

Sources say Preston had been living apart from his wife for about a year and was living in the basement of a daughter’s house.

A retired logger and one-time politician, Preston has been described as an avid hunter, but his brother says he never knew him to have a gun in the truck.

Preston had been in a coma with a bullet lodged in his brain, his brother said.

Friday’s service for Pham is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ET at the North Huron Wescast Community Complex in Wingham.
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