B.C. man feared ‘hit’ because of a feeling, ex-Mountie tells inquest into deaths

BURNABY — A former RCMP officer says a man found dead with his wife and two young sons in Prince Rupert, B.C., told him days before that he had a “feeling” that someone was trying to kill them, not because anyone had actually threatened them.

Former corporal Matthew Jones, now a constable with the CN Police Service, told a B.C. coroners inquest into the deaths that he pulled over Christopher Duong and his wife, Janet Nguyen, as they were driving around Prince Rupert at about 2 a.m. in June 2023, with their boys, aged two and four, in the back seat.

He says Duong told police in an earlier interaction the same night that if they stopped driving they would be killed, so he went out to find the family, who he described as neighbours with children around the same age as his.

Jones says he pulled over the couple’s pickup about 20 minutes later, and Nguyen was on a call with Duong’s sister who was on speakerphone “screaming over and over again” that her brother wasn’t “crazy.”

He says Duong, who was rumoured to be involved in the drug trade according to Prince Rupert “folklore,” told him that two cars had been “circling for hours” around his home, but Jones responded that they were neighbours and he hadn’t seen anything like that, and Nguyen later agreed that she hadn’t either.

He says Nguyen told him she had to believe Duong’s claim about them being targeted since he was her husband, but she later agreed that the best place for him was in a hospital, and Jones detained Duong under the Mental Health Act.

The inquest, which began Monday, has not yet heard how the family died. Their bodies were found on June 13, 2023.

A notice of civil claim filed by B.C.’s director of civil forfeiture in 2015 describes Duong as a “violent gang member and drug trafficker” who was well known to police.

The inquest being held in Burnaby, B.C., heard earlier that Duong told police during the first traffic stop that his family was being targeted in a “hit.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 3, 2026.

The Canadian Press