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Komarno man, 67, gets six years for making automatic weapons

By: Mike McIntyre

Posted: 10/24/2012 12:25 PM | Comments: 0

A man caught manufacturing machine guns on his sprawling rural Manitoba property has been sentenced to six years in prison.

Elwyn Evans, 67, was convicted last month in one of the first cases of its kind ever uncovered in the province. He returned to court Wednesday to learn his fate.

During submissions earlier this month, Evans went on a lengthy, off-the-cuff rant about being wrongfully convicted by a corrupt system.

"I'm innocent," he shouted to Queen's Bench Justice Karen Simonsen. "I don't understand any of this. Do you want me to hang myself? Is that what you want?"

Evans was seeking, at most, another four months in custody in addition to 19 and-a-half months of pretrial custody which was given double-time credit of 39 months. But Simonsen ruled Wednesday he must serve another 33 months behind bars, making it a six-year sentence on paper.

The Crown was seeking a nine-year term on paper. They cited several prior convictions dating back to the 1960s, including three separate weapons offences.

Evans claims he was stunned to discover his property was home to a massive weapons operation, but jurors rejected that story in finding him guilty of running an illegal enterprise. The case revolves around an August 2006 police raid in Komarno, about 75 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Officers found 19 Sten submachine-guns, 121 Sten magazines and a homemade .50-calibre rifle. They also discovered three solid-steel pen guns -- homemade weapons disguised as ballpoint pens.

Evans claims other visitors to the property -- including a person living in an outlying camper-trailer -- must have been responsible for the cache. Evans went on a lengthy tirade Wednesday about the man, calling him both a police informant and a "murderer."

Police found no fingerprints or other forensic evidence linking Evans to the firearms, but the Crown relied on a witness who said he sold Sten parts to Evans about a year earlier. There were also drawings of the pen guns found in Evans' attached garage along with other pieces used to assemble the weapons.

Evans admits to being an expert at working with metals and that he would have been capable of assembling the guns in his shop. His life reads like a movie, including having his father killed in the Second World War, serving a stint as a paratrooper in the British Royal Air Force, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1971, losing a five-year-old son to a tragic house fire a few years later, being severely injured by a workplace accident in the 1990s and fighting skin cancer on three occasions.

Crown attorney Brian Bell told court it's safe to assume Evans was in the business of supplying organized crime groups with the high-powered weaponry. But defence lawyer Gerri Wiebe said there is no such evidence, and that Evans has a natural curiosity about collecting military firearms based on his history.

www.mikeoncrime.com

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