Suspicious death victim ID'd as man also shot in 2007

The body found Tuesday on a trail near the Cypress Bowl recreation area in West Vancouver has been identified as a 35-year-old man known to police.

The victim was Vahid Mahanian, of West Vancouver, police said Thursday.

Mahanian was wounded in a gunfight in Richmond in January 2007.

He had been reported missing by his mother and fiancée June 30.

An autopsy Thursday failed to determine a cause of death, but investigators continue to treat the death as suspicious, West Vancouver Const. Jeff Palmer said in a release.

Palmer said traffic restrictions will continue on Cypress Mountain Road near the scene where the body was found.

Palmer said Mahanian's car is still unaccounted for.  He was last known to be driving a 1994 Blue Pontiac Grand Am with the B.C. licence 051-RAN.

Vancouver homicide investigators are working with the West Vancouver officers on the case, Palmer said.

Mahanian was one of three men injured in the 2007 incident in Richmond's Dover Park , in which police said more than 150 bullets were fired between two groups of men.