Shawn (Buck) Vassel was nicknamed the Spider-Man Killer after scaling down 11 floors of a North York highrise apartment in an unsuccessful bid to elude police bent on arresting him for murder.
Now, Spider-Man won’t be rappelling down the side of buildings any time soon for two reasons.
Facing charges of second-degree murder in connection with a deadly shooting in May, the 35-year-old Vassel’s in a hospital bed at St. Mike’s — paralyzed from the waist down — after Monday’s gun battle in the Queen St. and Ossington Ave. area.
Shot three times, bullets pierced Vassel’s right lower back, upper thigh and left lower leg.
It’s not yet known whether his paralysis is temporary or permanent.
The shooters scattered 22 9-mm shell casings on the ground and wounded two others beside Vassel, said police.
“It was an all out gun battle,” Det. Darren Worth of 14 Division said.
“At this point, there is no known connection between the shooting and the murder.”
Vassel was in his hospital bed on Wednesday when police charged him with second-degree murder, stemming from the May 3 shooting death of Justin Kyle Ezeard, 32, on Millwick Dr.
His lawyer Breana Vandebeek stood beside her conscious client on Thursday as she spoke via phone to the Crown at the Ontario court of justice in North York.
His case was remanded until Aug. 2.
Vassel spent more than seven years in jail for the cold-blooded shooting death of pot dealer Husam Dagheim in 2007 in the parking lot of the Coliseum movie theatre near Square One in Mississauga.
Vassel received a life sentence with no parole for at least 16 years.
The Ontario Court of Appeal quashed that second-degree murder conviction and ordered a new trial last Sept., citing multiple legal errors by the trial judge.
Last November, Vassel walked away on a time-served sentence — 10 years — after pleading guilty to manslaughter.
He rented his girlfriend’s car for $100 to the killers as a getaway vehicle for an armed drug ripoff on Dec. 2, 2007.
Gorham, who’s still representing Vassel, declined comment on the new charge.
In January 2008, a month after the Dagheim murder, Vassel was trapped by cops in his mom’s 18th-floor apartment on San Romanoway.
Vassel escaped by quickly dropping and swinging from one floor balcony to the next until he emerged on the ground floor.
Cops captured him at the nearby Jane Finch Mall.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
