Crown fails to prove gun’s ownership

Police seized gym bag with a revolver inside while arresting bricklayer on outstanding warrants

KITCHENER — On May 28, 2015, police seized a CCM gym bag on a Kitchener construction site. Inside was a .357 Magnum revolver with the serial numbers ground off and the barrel cut short.

“Four live rounds of ammunition were in the cylinder,” Justice Catrina Braid said. “The hammer was sitting on a cylinder with a round in it..”

Earlier in the day, police saw bricklayer Robert Quinn beside a CCM bag. They found the gun and charged him with nine offences, including possession of a loaded restricted firearm.

Twenty-eight months after he was arrested, Quinn was found not guilty of all charges. Braid ruled the prosecution failed to prove he had possession of the bag or gun.

Waterloo Regional Police had been conducting surveillance on Quinn. At 6 a.m. on May 28, Const. Joseph Morelli saw him get in a Kia Forte in Floradale and followed it to a McDonald’s parking lot in Waterloo, where Quinn put a small dark gym bag in the trunk.

Morelli was unable to provide any additional description of the bag.

Quinn then drove to a housing construction site on Ludolph Street, just west of the intersection of Huron Road and Fischer-Hallman Road in Kitchener. At 7:15 a.m., Const. Brian Serapiglia saw a CCM duffel

bag on the ground beside Quinn.

Quinn was working as a bricklayer. There were three or four other bricklayers working nearby.

Close to the lunch hour, Morelli saw Quinn take a small gym bag to the garage of a partially constructed house.

At 3:21 p.m., five police officers in tactical gear with weapons drawn arrested Quinn on two outstanding warrants. Const. Brent Gerber found the handgun inside a CCM bag in the garage.

The judge noted the only previous “confirmed sighting” of the CCM bag had been by Serapiglia.

“At that time, Mr. Quinn was not holding, carrying, reaching into or otherwise handling the bag,” Braid said in a ruling last month.

“The CCM gym bag has distinctive white markings on a dark background,” the judge added.

“However, Const. Morelli did not observe those markings during his two sightings of a bag in Mr. Quinn’s possession earlier in the day.

“Const. Morelli’s observations of a small gym bag are insufficient to establish, with any degree of certainty, that the bag that he observed was the CCM bag. It would be dangerous to assume that the bag that Const. Morelli saw was, in fact, the CCM bag.”

No fingerprints or DNA were found on the bag or the gun.

“The Crown argues that the court can make common-sense inferences that Mr. Quinn was in control of the CCM bag and had knowledge of its contents,” the judge said. “However, these inferences are not adequately supported by the evidence.”

Braid ruled the Crown failed to prove Quinn was in possession of the bag or the gun.

“Having considered the entirety of the evidence, I find that the evidence falls short of any reasonable inference that Mr. Quinn was exercising control over the CCM bag or that he had knowledge of its contents.”

The nine charges Quinn faced included possession of a loaded restricted firearm, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, possession of a firearm without a licence, carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a firearm while prohibited by a court order.

Quinn, who had been in custody since his arrest, argued in June 2016 that his right to be tried within a reasonable time had been infringed. The judge ruled the delay was reasonable. Quinn was represented by defence lawyer Talman Rodocker.