At least two people in Maine may have violated U.S. federal law by helping a man from Nova Scotia acquire two of the weapons he used during the April 2020 riot that killed 22 people. , found an investigation by CBC News – although it seems unlikely that they will face charges.
After police shot and killed a gunman at a gas station in Anfield, NA, they found five firearms in his possession. Investigators traced three of the weapons back to Holton, Maine, a small town less than seven kilometers from the New Brunswick border that the shooter frequented.
Court records and documents released by the public inquiry into the tragedy outline how investigators believe Gabriel Wortman received them. They suggest that a longtime friend in Holton gave him a gun and he took another from the man’s home. He also arranged to buy a powerful rifle for money after attending a gun show in the city.
The shooter, who did not have a firearms license, brought the weapons to Canada. Under US law, he should not be able to get them at all.
In the United States, it is illegal for an American to transfer, sell, trade, give, transport, or deliver firearms to someone he knows is not a U.S. resident, including Canadian tourists. Anyone found in violation can face fines or up to 10 years in prisondepending on the details of the crime.
Violations do not always end in court
It seems that no one in the United States has ever been accused of providing weapons used by the shooter.
A retired U.S. attorney general said this was not entirely surprising. Margaret Groban said gun crimes rarely end up in U.S. courts unless the defendant is considered a community risk.
After police shot and killed a gunman at a gas station in Anfield, NS, they found five firearms in his possession: three pistols and two rifles. He received three of them in Holton, Maine. (Commission on Mass Victims)
“Although it is technically a violent crime and people say, ‘Why don’t you prosecute book crimes?’, There are no resources available for that and it may not even be appropriate to do so,” he said. Groban, who worked for the US Department of Justice and now teaches a course in firearms law at the University of Maine.
“There may be a number of relevant facts that could lead to whether public safety will be served as the perpetrator of this horrible villain has died.”
She added that the priority was to stop people “actively involved in violent crimes and the use of firearms to commit these crimes”.
Technical violations are much lower on the list.
No charges have been filed in the United States
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Exposures (ATF) is not conducting an active investigation, according to spokesman Eric Longnacker. He said he was unaware of allegations of mass shootings in Nova Scotia at the local, state or federal levels. CBC News was unable to find a record of the charges in court.
The FBI has asked Canadian law enforcement about the case and said it could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.
Meanwhile, the RCMP returned questions to the Americans.
Mounties said it was working with its “international counterparts” and “any decision to prosecute crimes committed outside of Canada will be reviewed by the relevant law enforcement agency.”
The RCMP initially said tracking weapons and finding out if anyone had helped the shooter at the start of the killings was a critical part of their investigation.
Only three people on the Canadian side of the border have been charged with criminal charges: the shooter’s wife, the wife’s brother and her son-in-law have been charged with giving ammunition to Wortman.
Since then, two of the cases have been brought to restorative justice, and the third has been found guilty.
How he got the weapons
Summaries of police statements published in a lawsuit launched by CBC News and other media shed some light on the investigation.
They show that in the days and weeks after the killings, an FBI agent conducted interviews in Holton, as well as the RCMP and ATF.
One of the people he spoke to was Sean Conlog, a longtime friend of the shooter who frequently visited him and his partner, Lisa Banfield, in Holton.
The gunman often stays at his friend Sean Conlog’s home in Holton, Maine. He had parcels, including parts for the replica of the cruiser he built, sent there and he would take them back across the border. (Eric Walliscroft / CBC)
The 68-year-old Conlog lives in a two-story house with a spacious garage, located on a quiet street dotted with aging Victorian houses. Not far from the Elks Club is for members only in one of the majestic brick buildings in the city center, where he will take Wortman for a drink.
The gunman would send parcels to Conlogue’s address, including motorcycle parts and a light strip used to equip the replica of the police cruiser used during the riot. Conlog later told the commission conducting the public inquiry that he did not open the packages, but instead kept them in his home until the shooter picked them up.
Their friendship was close enough that Conlog traveled to Nova Scotia for Wortman’s 50th birthday.
The gunman and Banfield also closed their dental business in Dartmouth, North Carolina, to care for Conlog after he underwent leg surgery and needed help moving, according to transcripts of interviews with the Mass Victims Commission.
Conlog will take his friend for a drink at Elks Lodge in Houlton. (Eric Walliscroft / CBC)
Some time before the killings, the gunman called Conlog to say he would leave something for him in his will, Conlog told the commission last fall.
The gunman and his wife spoke to Conlogue hours before the violence in Portapique, NS began on April 18, 2020, one of the reasons lawyers representing relatives of the victims are arguing with Conlogue must be called as a witness on request.
In a telephone interview last November, commission investigators did not investigate the Conlogue on firearms. He told investigators at no time that he did not appear to be under criminal investigation and expressed concern that his statements would be made public.
Gratitude Gun
Conlog, who declined to speak to CBC News when two reporters went to his home in late March, met the shooter years ago in New Brunswick. They share a mutual friend, former Fredericton lawyer Tom Evans.
According to search warrant documents, Wortman received one of the five pistols later found by police – a Ruger Mini 14 – from Evans’ mansion after his death. This rifle and service pistol issued by the RCMP, stolen by Const. Heidi Stevenson, after he killed her during the mass shooting, were the only weapons investigators traced to Canada.
The other three came from Maine, and court records show that Conlogue once owned two of them – a 9mm Ruger P89 semi-automatic pistol and a 23 .40 caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol.
Both pistols are considered limited firearms in Canada, which means that people were only allowed to use them if they had a license, and that is for a specific purpose.
Two weeks after the shooting, the Canadian government announced a ban on 1,500 types of firearms, including the two rifles used in the killings, the Ruger Mini and the Colt M4 rifle. It was now illegal to adapt with additional cartridges through high-capacity cartridges, as the shooter had done.
Police tracked a 9mm Ruger P89 semi-automatic pistol to Holton, Maine, and Conlog told them he gave it to the shooter. He said his friend took a 23 .40 caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol from his home. Police found the gun in the stolen car that the assailant was driving when he was killed. (CBC News / Illustration)
Although his name has been edited in the search warrant documents, the Conlogue can be identified as the details match the statements he and others made to the public inquiry.
The records state that on May 7, 2020, Conlog explained to an FBI agent that he had given Wortman a Ruger pistol two to five years earlier “as a token of gratitude” in exchange for strange things like removing trees because as his friend would not want to accept payment.
Conlog told investigators that several years before the shooting, he discovered that his friend had taken two of his Glock pistols back to Canada, and when asked about it, Wortman said he “needed them for protection.” One of these Glocks was found with him at the end of the shooting.
According to the search warrant, the gunman drove approximately five hours to Maine 15 times in the two years before the shooting, the Canadian Border Service said. (CBC News / Illustration)
Conlogue’s close friends, Angel Patterson and Scott Shaffer, described a slightly different sequence of events in their interviews with the committee. They said they were at Conlog’s house as soon as they learned of the shooting, and he told them he had just found empty gun boxes in his home.
Purchase of a semi-automatic rifle and straw
That explains where police believe two of the firearms in Maine came from.
But what about the third?
Police believe the shooter arranged to buy a 5.56-caliber Colt Law Enforcement semi-automatic rifle, which he admired after attending a weapons show in Holton.
It was April 2019 and at that time he was staying at Konlog’s home, according to court documents and transcripts from the public investigation.
Paul Harrison, who was the executive director of the Holton Rifle and Pistol Club, which ran the popular event, said all people selling firearms in the arena where it took place were authorized dealers. This meant that every buyer had to go through it FBI inspection before the sale is made.
The 31st annual Houlton Rifle and Pistol Club Weapons Show was on April 27-28, 2019. One of …
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