Accused of running fentanyl ring from Stony

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/07/2025 (395 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man in prison for a gun store smash-and-grab heist led a fentanyl trafficking ring across multiple provinces while behind bars, provincial officials say.

The interprovincial drug ring was discovered when Brandon Police Service and RCMP were jointly conducting a traffic enforcement push on the Trans-Canada Highway outside of Brandon in January 2024.

Officers pulled over a vehicle for a traffic violation at about 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 24, 2024, about five kilometres west of Brandon, and found a bag containing nine kilograms of fentanyl. It was worth about $1.1 million on the street, Brandon police said at the time.

The driver and a passenger — believed to be drug couriers transporting the powerful opioid — were arrested.

The alleged kingpin behind the operation, Brett David Kehler, was serving a five-year-and-two-month prison sentence for break-and-enter to steal firearms and weapons trafficking in Stony Mountain Institution at the time.

Details of his role as the alleged head of the trafficking ring were revealed in a criminal property forfeiture lawsuit filed in the Court of King’s Bench by provincial officials last week. The suit seeks to retain $8,680 seized from an Altona home by Brandon police who were searching the place on a drug warrant in August last year.

“While incarcerated at Stony Mountain Institution, the defendant Kehler operated an interprovincial drug trafficking organization,” reads the government court filing.

Kehler, who’s in his late 20s and from Altona, pleaded guilty for his role in the 2018 gun store break-in in Winkler, which saw 37 firearms land in the hands of Alberta’s criminal underworld. He was among a group who used a stolen truck to drive through the store’s window, then ran inside, smashed display cases and made off with the weapons in about a minute-and-a-half. He was sentenced in August 2021.

All told, officials allege, Kehler arranged for the shipment of at least 13.549 kilos of fentanyl from Alberta to other provinces between December 2023 and January 2024, while behind bars. The street value of the drugs is about $6.7 million, officials said.

The first shipment he’s accused of arranging was a kilo of the drugs sent from Alberta to Manitoba on Dec. 23, 2023. On Jan. 12 last year, he allegedly arranged the shipment of five kilos from Alberta to Ontario. Brandon police and Mounties caught the third shipment of nine kilos, court documents say.

Kehler was charged by Brandon police with conspiracy to sell fentanyl in January 2025, along with an Alberta woman, Cherie Ann Arik, with whom he was in a romantic relationship.

The court filing claims Arik assisted Kehler by providing drugs to interprovincial couriers, as directed by Kehler from behind prison walls. It’s not clear how he’s believed to have communicated with Arik from prison.

On March 6, 2024, corrections officers at Stony Mountain witnessed Kehler pass a package to another cell, which staff intercepted, court papers say.

Corrections officers found a contraband cellphone, 5.8 grams of cocaine and 51.6 grams of methamphetamine in the package, according to the papers.

Kehler was let out on mandated statutory release for his 2021 sentence on July 29, 2024, before federal corrections officials learned he was to face new charges related to the drug ring, parole records show.

The August 2024 raid on Kehler’s Altona home also turned up a cellphone on which police found “numerous communications” about drug sales.

As a result of the new investigation, Kehler’s release was revoked in November, but he’s set to be released with conditions in September on the 2021 sentence, parole records show.

“Concerns remain about your involvement in the institutional drug and gang subcultures, and acts of violence,” reads a decision from last week on what conditions he will have on his pending statutory release, prepared by Parole Board of Canada official Lisa Graham.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca