Gun-manufacturer Huot sentenced to 7 years in prison
LaSalle factory made dozens of weapons, accessories linked to organized crime
If it hadn’t been for the break-in at the LaSalle factory in March 2014, Jean-Pierre Huot might still be making a fortune on the misfortune of others.
But what police found in his factory as they went to investigate that night, including various assault weapons, silencers and magazines that can shoot up to 35 bullets at once as well as a whole arsenal of parts to make more guns, was enough to tell them they were on to something much more sinister.
Huot, 62, was sentenced to seven years in prison Thursday for manufacturing and trafficking automatic weapons that police believe were used in a slew of robberies, drug deals and assassinations from Montreal to Toronto.
His artisanal guns, made at Perfection Métal with no traceable serial numbers and equipped with silencers and 35-round magazines, were definitely not made for paintball.
“The court takes into consideration all the premeditation, the planning and the research required to make these powerful, dangerous weapons, which demonstrates the accused’s lack of morality,” Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau said, reading her decision on sentencing aloud in court.
“The court takes into consideration that Huot used his employees and took advantage of their credulity to make them believe these were paintball (guns). The court retains the lack of remorse by the accused, who continues to pretend he was making paintball guns, despite the crushing weight of the evidence against him.”
The investigation that followed the middle-of-the-night robbery, matching ballistics reports to the particular markings of Huot’s guns, allowed police to conclude the guns were used by street gangs and organized crime figures in at least two murders, two attempted murders and a host of other crimes between November 2013 and September 2016.
Among the more high profile of the crimes was the assassination of street gang leader Ducarme Joseph as he walked along Michel-Ange St. in the Villeray—St-Michel—Parc-Extension borough. At the time, Joseph was believed to have been involved in the 2009 murder of Nick (The Ritz) Rizzuto, the eldest son of then-Montreal Mafia leader Vito Rizzuto. The police recovered two pistols at the crime scene believed to have been made at Huot’s factory.
“Huot knew he was selling guns to organized crime ... and that he was doing business with the ‘Italians’ with the risk that could entail for the life and safety of others,” Charbonneau said, a month after a jury convicted Huot of six counts of manufacturing and trafficking firearms.
One of Huot’s guns, modelled on Intratec’s Tec-9 semi-automatic pistols — the kind of gun used in various mass shootings in the U.S. in the 1990s — was also believed to have been used in the murder of Mario Bourgeois, 53, who was fatally shot as he exited a halfway house on 15th Ave. in St-Michel. Bourgeois was out on day parole while serving a 15-year sentence for having sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl and two women.
Then there was the attempted hit on suspected Mafioso Marco Pizzi; the unsuccessful drive-by shooting attempt on the wife of a Laval businessman as she stood on her balcony; the armed robbery of a Birks jewelry store; a domestic violence incident in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu; the holdup of a brothel in Toronto; and numerous drug raids in Montreal and Toronto, where Huot’s guns were recovered along with mass quantities of cocaine and heroine, to name just some of the places where guns made at Huot’s shop were used or found.
While defence lawyer Robert Bellefeuille recommended a fiveyear prison term, prosecutor Philippe Vallières-Roland asked the judge to give him a 10-year sentence for manufacturing a total of 50 to 60 automatic assault weapons, 25 of which were later found by police in Quebec and Ontario.
In rendering her sentencing, Charbonneau chose the middle ground.
“The defence asserts that Huot should not be punished for the crimes committed by others using firearms manufactured in his factory. The court agrees. There is nevertheless room to consider that Huot could not be unaware of the dangerous uses to which his firearms would be put because he knew very well that they were going to organized crime.”
She then quotes from a previous decision by Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Morgan, presiding over a similar case of trafficking where the guns were used to kill people.
“The trafficking conviction in the defendant’s case connotes more than just an illegal way to make money; it places the defendant as a crucial link in a chain of cause and effect leading to violent gun crime.”