The man killed Friday evening in a double-shooting outside a shopping mall in east-end Montreal is the presumed leader of the Bo-Gars street gang, but an expert on the city's underworld says the slaying is not likely part of an all-out gang war.

Chénier Dupuy was shot around 7 p.m. while sitting in a car with another man near the Galeries d'Anjou shopping centre. The other man was also hit, but managed to run out of the car, bleeding, into a Baton Rouge restaurant washroom, and is now in hospital in stable condition.

Chénier Dupuy was thought to be the head of the Bo-Gars gang, which controls drug trafficking and prostitution in north-end Montreal. (Radio-Canada)

Witnesses said a pair of assailants attacked the men in the mall's parking garage before fleeing the scene.

Dupuy, who was in his mid-30s, is thought to have headed up the Bo-Gars for nearly two decades. The gang is part of the alliance of street gangs known as the Bloods, or Rouges, and its territory is in the neighbourhoods of Rivière-des-Prairies and Montreal North, near where Dupuy was shot.

Dupuy was on parole, having only recently left prison. He was sentenced in February 2011 to 6½ years' incarceration for possessing marijuana and cocaine for the purposes of trafficking, but had it reduced to 20 months on account of his pre-trial jail time.

Seven hours after his death, another Bloods loyalist was shot dead in his car in Laval. That man was 42-year-old Lamartine Sévère Paul, who had also left prison in the last few months.

Criminologist Maria Mourani, a specialist on Montreal gangs and the MP for the riding that borders on Montreal North, said the killings could be part of an internal dispute within the Bo-Gars. That would make sense if another gang member had taken control while Dupuy was imprisoned and was now trying to consolidate his position.

Dupuy's and Paul's assassination might also be tied to the Mafia, Mourani told CBC's French-language news channel. Reputed Montreal Mafia kingpin Vito Rizzuto will complete a sentence in a U.S. prison this fall, when it is expected he could return to the city.

"Someone is probably trying to eliminate his middlemen before then," she said. "Is this a gang war? I don't think so…. This sounds more like the Mafia rather than a gang war."

Mourani said she wouldn't be surprised if the third of three people shot dead over the weekend in Montreal also had criminal ties.