KAMLOOPS, B.C. — A man charged with eight weapons-related offences was involved in operating a "chop shop" for modifying firearms, a Crown lawyer says.
Frank Caputo told B.C. Supreme Court that police pulled Charles Patrick over in December 2013 behind the wheel of a suspicious vehicle.
RCMP allege they found him with a loaded, sawed-off shotgun inside his jacket.
Mounties raided his home the same evening, and the Crown alleges a number of other modified weapons were seized.
“(It was) a chop shop for guns," Caputo said in his opening statement. "It was a place where guns were altered in furtherance of criminal activity."
Caputo said the trial scheduled for seven days will also hear that Mounties found another sawed-off shotgun, a shortened rifle, tools to modify guns and “ammo all over the place.”
Patrick was formerly married to Maxine Patrick, office manager of the Kamloops Blazers hockey team for almost a decade, beginning in 1994.
She defrauded the organization of almost $1 million over that period.
