ABBOTSFORD, British Columbia -- The latest mayhem started at the end of March, when 21-year-old Sean Murphy, a popular former high school hockey player, drove into a withering blast of gunfire near Bateman Park.

He was probably dead before his car coasted to a stop in the weeds.

That night, Ryan Richards, 19, abruptly left a friend's house after getting a cell phone call. His body was found the next morning behind a rural produce store. The stab wounds on his hands told the tale of a furious fight for his life. The undertaker apologized to his family for not being able to conceal them.

The bodies of two local high school seniors, Dilsher Gill, 17, and Joseph Randay, 18, were found May 1 in their car on a remote road just outside this normally quiet city of 134,000 near Vancouver. The boys had been seen driving away with an armed man the night before.

This crisp region finds itself amidst a gang war that has killed at least 18 young people this year.

Drug dealers are gunning down women (one with her son in the back seat), high school students with no gang allegiances and one another -- in broad daylight in and around the city that will host the 2010 Winter Olympics.

It got so bad this spring that police erected concrete barriers outside the homes of two gangsters to slow down potential drive-by assassins.

"Let's get serious. There is a gang war, and it's brutal. What we have seen are new rules of engagement for the gangsters," Vancouver's chief police constable, Jim Chu, told reporters in March.

Authorities trace the violence to the recent government crackdown on cocaine traffickers in Mexico, which has squeezed profit margins for cocaine north of the U.S. border. Canada's outlaw retailers are fighting to the death over market share, police say, a situation exacerbated by vendettas and vacuums left by the arrests of gang leaders.

"There's a complete disruption of the flow of cocaine into Canada, and we are seeing the result," said Pat Fogarty, operations officer for the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, British Columbia's main law enforcement agency targeting organized crime.

The province became an important player in the Mexican cocaine marketplace, in part by bartering its powerful home-grown marijuana, "B.C. Bud," which helps fuel what is estimated to be a $6.3-billion-a-year industry.

Canadian drug organizations use planes, helicopters and, in one case, a tunnel to move drugs. They have equipped trucks with secret panels and devices to avoid detection by X-rays and drug-sniffing dogs.

The Lower Mainland has become a playground for young up-and-coming gangsters, who speed around town in armor-plated Cadillac Escalades, Porsche SUVs and BMW sedans.

Canadian politicians have made clear that the gang problem must end. Money has poured in for new officers. Legislation is being proposed to expand surveillance capability, toughen sentences, crack down on firearms smuggled in from the U.S. and outlaw armored cars and flak jackets.

There have been successes: In May, police arrested eight senior gang members.

A month earlier, Vancouver police announced a series of arrests that they said had "functionally dismantled" one group responsible for nearly 100 shootings.