After police shot and killed the gunman at a gas station in Anfield, New York, they found five firearms in his possession. Investigators found three of the guns back in Hilton, Maine, a small town less than seven miles from the often-visited New Brunswick border. Court records and documents released by the public investigation into the tragedy describe how investigators believe Gabriel Wortmann took them. They suggest that a longtime friend of his in Houlton gave him a pistol and took another from this man’s house. He also arranged to buy a high-powered cash rifle after attending a gun show in the city. The perpetrator, who did not have a firearms license, smuggled the weapons to Canada. Under US law, he should never have acquired them from the beginning. In the US, it is illegal for an American to carry, sell, trade, give, transport or hand over a firearm to someone they know is not a US resident, including Canadian tourists. Anyone found in violation can face fines or imprisonment of up to 10 yearsdepending on the details of the offense.
Violations do not always end up in the courts
It seems that no one in the US has ever been accused of supplying weapons used by the sniper.
A retired U.S. federal prosecutor has said that this is not surprising. Margaret Groban said gun crimes rarely end up in U.S. courts unless the accused is considered a danger to the community.
After police shot and killed the gunman at a gas station in Anfield, New York, they found five firearms in his possession: three pistols and two rifles. He acquired three of them in Hilton, Maine. (Committee on Mass Accidents)
“Although technically it is a violent crime and people are saying, ‘Why aren’t you prosecuting crimes in the books?’, There are no resources available to do this and it may not even be appropriate to do so,” he said. Groban, who worked for the US Department of Justice and now teaches firearms law at the University of Maine.
“There could be some relevant information that could go into whether or not public safety will be served, as the perpetrator of this horrific outburst is dead.”
He added that the priority is to stop those who are “actively involved in violent crime and use firearms to commit these crimes”.
Technical offenses fall far short of the list.
No charges were reported in the US
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has no active investigation under way, according to spokesman Erik Longnecker. He said he was not aware of any allegations of mass shootings in Nova Scotia being made at the local, state or federal level. CBC News could not find any record of the charges filed in court. The FBI sent inquiries about the case to Canadian law enforcement and said it could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. Meanwhile, the RCMP returned questions to the Americans. The Mounties said they were cooperating with their “international counterparts” and that “any decision to prosecute offenses committed outside Canada will be reviewed by law enforcement.” Earlier, the RCMP said monitoring the weapons and finding out if anyone had helped the gunman before the killings was a crucial part of their investigation. Only three people on the Canadian side of the border have been prosecuted: the gunman’s wife, her husband’s brother and her brother-in-law have been charged with giving ammunition to Wortman. Since then, two of the cases have been referred to restorative justice, while a third has been found guilty.
How he got the weapons
Summaries of police statements released through a lawsuit filed by CBC News and other media outlets shed some light on the investigation.
They show that, in the days and weeks after the killings, an FBI agent interviewed Hulton, as did the RCMP and the ATF.
One of the people they spoke to was Sean Conlogue, a longtime friend of the gunman who often hosted him and his partner, Lisa Banfield, at the Hilton.
The gunman often stayed at the home of Sean Conlogue’s friend in Houlton, Maine. He had parcels, including pieces for the cruiser he made, sent them there and drove them across the border. (Eric Woolliscroft / CBC)
Conlogue, 68, lives in a two-story house with a spacious garage, located on a quiet street littered with old Victorian houses. Not far from the Elks Club just for members in one of the impressive brick buildings in the city center where he took Wortman for drinks.
The gunman would send parcels to Conlogue, including motorcycle spare parts and a light bar used to equip a replica of the police cruiser used during the blast. Conlogue later told the committee that led the public inquiry that he did not open the packages, but kept them in his house until the gunman picked them up.
Their friendship was so close that Conlogue traveled to Nova Scotia for Wortman’s 50th birthday.
The gunman and Banfield also closed their dental business in Dartmouth, NS, to care for Conlogue after undergoing leg surgery and needing help moving, according to transcripts of Mass Casualty Commission interviews.
Conlogue was taking his friend for a drink at Elks Lodge in Hilton. (Eric Woolliscroft / CBC)
Shortly before the killings, the gunman called Conlogue to tell him he would leave him something in his will, Conlogue told the commission last fall.
The gunman and his wife spoke to Conlogue hours before the violence began in Portapique, NS on April 18, 2020, one of the reasons lawyers representing relatives of the victims were arguing with Conlogue. must be called as a witness in research.
In a telephone interview last November, the commission’s investigators did not look at Conlogue for firearms. He told investigators he had no impression he was being investigated and expressed concern that his statements would be made public.
“Gratitude Sign” pistol
Conlogue, who declined to speak to CBC News when two reporters went to his home in late March, met the gunman years ago in New Brunswick. They shared a mutual friend, former Fredericton lawyer Tom Evans.
Wortman took one of the five guns later found by police – a Ruger Mini 14 – from Evans estate after his death, according to search warrant documents. That rifle and an RCMP service pistol stolen from Const. Heidi Stevenson was the only investigator found in Canada after he killed her during a mass shooting.
The other three came from Maine and court records suggest Conlogue once had two of them – a 9mm Ruger P89 semi-automatic pistol and a Glock 23 .40 semi-automatic pistol.
Both pistols were considered limited firearms in Canada, meaning that people were only authorized to use them if they had a license and were 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 a Colt M4 rifle. It was already illegal to adjust them with extra rounds through overload cartridges, as the gunman did.
Police found a 9mm Ruger P89 semi-automatic rifle back in Hilton, Maine, and Konlog told them he had given it to the shooter as a gift. He said his friend took a Glock 23 .40 caliber automatic pistol from his home. Police found the pistol in the stolen car driven by the gunman when he was killed. (CBC News / Illustration)
Although his name appears on search warrant documents, Conlogue is recognizable because the details match statements he and others made to the public inquiry.
Records show that on May 7, 2020, Conlogue 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 tasks such as removing trees, as his friend did not made accept payment.
Conlogue told investigators that a few years before the shootings, he discovered that his friend had taken two of the Glock pistols back to Canada, and when asked, Wortman said he “needed them for protection.” One of these Glocks was found with him at the end of the shooting.
According to search warrant documents, the gunman drove about five hours to Maine 15 times in the two years prior to the shootings, according to the Canada Border Service. (CBC News / Illustration)
Conlogue’s close friends, Angel Patterson and Scott Shaffer, covered a slightly different series of events in their interviews with the committee. They said that as soon as they learned of the shootings, they were at Conlogue’s house and told them that he had just discovered empty boxes of weapons at his house.
Buy a semi-automatic rifle and a straw
This explains why police believe two of Maine’s firearms. But what about the third? Police believe the perpetrator arranged to buy a Colt Law Enforcement 5.56 caliber semi-automatic rifle rifle that he admired after attending a gun show in Houlton. It was April 2019 and he was staying at Conlogue’s house at the time, according to court documents and public investigation records. Paul Harrison, who was a member of the Houlton Rifle and Pistol Club executive who conducted the popular event, said all the people selling firearms in the arena where they were held were authorized dealers. This meant that every buyer had to go through FBI history check before the sale is completed. The 31st annual weapons exhibition of the Houlton Rifle and Pistol Club was help on 27-28 April 2019. One of …
