The following is a report about a bail hearing, which means the alleged facts discussed have not been proven in court.
A 23-year-old man caught carrying a loaded handgun and overcapacity clip on a Burnaby SkyTrain while he was on a curfew and under a firearms ban has been released on bail after spending 10 months in pretrial custody.
Mateo Zanatta had been at the North Fraser Pretrial Centre since his arrest at the Brentwood SkyTrain station on March 2, according to information presented at a bail hearing in Vancouver provincial court Friday.
No valid transit fare
Crown prosecutor Daniel Shih told the court that Metro Vancouver Transit Police were at the Brentwood station on the day of the incident conducting fare checks just before 1:20 a.m.
Zanatta had no valid fare when police checked him, so officers asked for his name and birth date, according to Shih.
"Upon identifying him, they noted that he was in breach of his curfew conditions in relation to an aggravated assault file out of Sechelt," Shih said.
Officers took Zanatta off the train at the Holdom station and searched him.
In his backpack, wrapped in cloth was a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol with a 15-round overcapacity magazine and six live rounds, according to Shih.
Shih noted Zanatta was under a 10-year firearms ban at the time because of eight separate offences in three jurisdictions when he was a youth.
He was also on bail with a curfew because of the Sechelt file.
Drugs worth $300,000 on the street
A little over three months earlier, in November 2022, New Westminster police had also found 1,087 fake Percocet pills containing fentanyl, 4,008 grams of MDMA and cutting agents with a total street value of about $300,000 in Zanatta's 1997 Toyota Camry, according to federal Crown prosecutor Parveen Bachra.
She said police had pulled over Zanatta's car because it had "extensive" front-end damage and a search of the licence plate showed the vehicle had reportedly been involved in a flight from police in Surrey two days earlier.
Both Bachra and Shih said Zanatta should be kept in jail until his case was resolved.
They noted the seriousness of the charges and said Zanatta would be a risk to commit more crimes if he was released.
'Tragic upbringing'
Defence lawyer Bill Jessop acknowledged the charges were serious and Zanatta might be considered a risk to commit more crimes on bail, but he said those risks could be mitigated by house arrest at a drug rehab facility and a $20,000 surety put up by Zanatta's uncle, a retired psychiatrist.
Jessop said Zanatta had had a "tragic upbringing," losing both his parents by age 11 and being lured into a life of crime by a 23-year-old who befriended him as a pre-teen and introduced him to drugs.
"He never really received any counselling or intervention from mental health services or anything of the like to assist him with losing his parents and dealing with an addiction," Jessop said.
The proposed house arrest at the rehab centre would be the first time Zanatta would get help for his addiction issues, according to Jessop.
Zanatta has a violent youth record and spent a lengthy period as a teen in custody, but Jessop noted there were no substantive charges on his record between 2017 and the New Westminster incident.
Jessop also noted there were multiple triable issues in the case related to whether Zanatta's charter rights were violated by police, including the methods officers used to find the drugs in his car in New West and the gun in his backpack in Burnaby.
"Those searches are all warrantless searches," Jessop said. "The burden's going to be on the Crown to demonstrate that the searches were unlawful in both of those circumstances."
$20,000 surety, house arrest
Judge Jennifer Oulton ultimately sided with Jessop.
She released Zanatta on his uncle’s $20,000 surety under the condition that Zanatta stay under house arrest at a drug rehab facility in Maple Ridge.
In delivering her ruling, Oulton noted Zanatta had never tried to get help for his addiction issues before.
Zanatta’s next appearance on the drug charges is Sept. 10 in New Westminster. His next date on the Burnaby firearms charges is Feb. 21 in Vancouver provincial court. The Sechelt charges were stayed in November.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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