An RCMP Emergency Response Team found several handguns and rifles in a Burnaby basement suite after investigating a call about shots fired last year, Vancouver Provincial Court heard Monday.
Prosecutor Kathy Murphy laid out details of what police uncovered at the suite in the 3700-block of Oxford Street, just across the Burnaby-Vancouver border, at the opening of the gun trial of Damion Ryan and Theresa Latham. Each is facing 30 charges, including possession of prohibited firearms, possession of guns with altered serial numbers and careless discharge of a firearm.
Murphy told Judge Brian Bastin that a civilian called 911 about 1: 45 a.m. on Aug. 26, 2010, reporting shots fired near the Oxford suite, where Ryan and Latham lived at the time.
She said the witness saw three men running across the lawn, one of whom appeared to have a gun in his hand. They turned north on Esmond Avenue and disappeared on Dundas.
When police arrived they found three firearms in the bush at the southwest corner of Esmond and Dundas, Murphy said. One of the guns smelled of gunpowder and had been freshly fired, she said.
The ERT surrounded the home on Oxford and entered the basement suite on exigent circumstances, to make sure no one had been injured, Murphy said.
When they got inside, "they observed several firearms - handguns and a rifle," she said. Police left the suite and then obtained a search warrant based on what they had seen, Murphy said.
RCMP Const. Greg Carwithen, who was in charge of exhibits during the search, described Monday how he seized three handguns and an SKS rifle in a bedroom in the suite, as well as another rifle, "in pieces" in a box near the furnace.
Parts of a gun were found in a pill container and ammunition was found in a BlackBerry box on top of the fridge, as well as in another box, he testified.
He also seized two bulletproof vests, Carwithen testified.
Defence lawyers Simon Buck, representing Ryan, and Elizabeth Lewis, for Latham, want the evidence thrown out, arguing their clients' Charter section 8 rights were violated by an unreasonable search.
Charges were laid against Ryan and Latham in November 2010. But they weren't arrested until after Ryan was wounded in a gangland shooting at an Oak Street restaurant in Vancouver on Dec. 12.
Ten people were wounded in the unprecedented gangland shooting, which Vancouver Police said at the time was in retaliation for the Oct. 16 assassination of Gurmit Singh Dhak at Burnaby's Metropolis at Metrotown shopping centre.
Dhak's fatal shooting was a major trigger for tit-for-tat gang violence that has been ongoing for more than a year.
