B.C. man operated ‘chop shop’ for guns to be used in crime: Crown lawyer

KAMLOOPS – A man charged with eight weapons-related offences was involved in operating a "chop shop" for modifying firearms, a Crown lawyer says.

Frank Caputo told B.C. Supreme Court that police pulled Charles Patrick over in December 2013 behind the wheel of a suspicious vehicle.

RCMP allege they found him with a loaded, sawed-off shotgun inside his jacket.

Mounties raided his home the same evening, and the Crown alleges a number of other modified weapons were seized.

“(It was) a chop shop for guns," Caputo said in his opening statement. "It was a place where guns were altered in furtherance of criminal activity."

Caputo said the trial scheduled for seven days will also hear that Mounties found another sawed-off shotgun, a shortened rifle, tools to modify guns and “ammo all over the place.”

Patrick was formerly married to Maxine Patrick, office manager of the Kamloops Blazers hockey team for almost a decade, beginning in 1994.

She defrauded the organization of almost $1 million over that period.