Nine years for man who kidnapped delivery driver

A delivery driver was kidnapped after the break-up of a business partnership involving “grey-market vapes” that were sold at Winnipeg convenience stores, a Manitoba judge has been told.

The Winnipeg Police Service said last week that investigators recently arrested a third suspect in the Oct. 11, 2024 incident, in which three men are accused of kidnapping the 22-year-old driver and holding him at gunpoint for hours as they stole merchandise from a storage facility.

One of the men arrested, 43-year-old Jonathon Ranger, pleaded guilty earlier this year to forcible confinement and two offences related to the stolen gun that was found when he was arrested in December 2024.

In June, he was sentenced to nine years in prison, minus time served, based on a joint recommendation from the Crown and defence as part of a plea bargain.

At his sentencing hearing, Crown prosecutor Amy Wood told provincial court Judge Rob Finlayson that Ranger’s business partnership with another Winnipeg man “was not going well and essentially falling apart.”

The nature of the business was not made clear in court, but it involved supplying corner stores with nicotine vape products.

Ranger’s lawyer, Christopher Gamby, said the business went “relatively well” before a dispute led the others involved to take some product from Ranger and have him removed.

“These were convenience stores… they were selling grey-market vapes and things of that nature. This is an area where it’s not strictly criminal, what they were up to,” Gamby told court. “Mr. Ranger was involved in this with some of these folk.”

The driver worked for Ranger’s business partner and was out doing deliveries on the evening of Oct. 11, 2024, when Ranger and others accosted him at the rear of a tattoo shop on Nairn Avenue and forced him into a trailer, said Wood.

The men took his cellphone and threatened to shoot him and kill his family. They forced him into the trailer and drove to a storage facility on Notre Dame Avenue, where their movements were caught on video surveillance, the prosecutor said. He was forced to provide codes to one of the lockers.

“He was taken at what (the victim) believed to be gunpoint, however, no firearm was ever recovered and there was nothing to be able to confirm what it was that the individuals had,” said Wood.

The victim remained locked in the trailer as the men used the storage code to take “approximately $25,000 worth of vape products from the locker” that Ranger felt belonged to him, the prosecutor said.

The men left — with the driver still in the trailer — and drove to various places across the city before dropping the driver off and returning his phone, said Wood.

The driver spoke to police initially, then took time to consider making further comments to investigators, Wood said.

The driver, a permanent resident of Canada who had a permit to work for Ranger’s ex-business partner, declined to make a formal victim impact statement, said Wood.

“He does very much remain fearful,” said the prosecutor. “He left Manitoba as a result of this and very much does not wish to return.”

By December 2024, Wood said, Winnipeg police had a warrant for Ranger’s arrest and had set up video surveillance at a Sherbrook Street address.

Just after 10:30 p.m. on Dec. 20 that year, investigators spotted him driving a Jeep. Officers in the service’s helicopter followed him to the lane behind a Notre Dame Avenue convenience store, where he tossed a gun into a garbage bin.

Ranger was arrested minutes later. A loaded pistol that had been reported stolen to Ottawa police was recovered, and 50 cartons of untaxed cigarettes were in the Jeep. He remained in jail without bail prior to the court proceedings.

Gamby said his client was initially arrested in November 2024, as the business relationship was dissolving. Ranger had leased a building that housed a convenience store and an apartment. He told the store staff that he wanted them out, the lawyer said.

His ex-business partner called police and said Ranger and others were at the store armed with guns, threatening to shoot it up, said the lawyer.

Ranger, who was arrested, found his apartment had been ransacked after he was let out of custody days later.

The building later burned to the ground and people began following Ranger around the city, according to the lawyer. Gamby said Ranger started to carry a gun. At the time, he was subject to five court orders barring him from possessing weapons.

His lengthy record includes several convictions for violence. His lawyer said he was trying to turn his life around before he got involved in the shady business partnership.

He had a traumatic upbringing that included time as a runaway after he was taken into child and family services care, but has since got sober in jail, Gamby said.

The judge wished him luck in turning his life around.

The other two accused, Tyson Shane Daniels, 34, and Terrence Joel McIvor, 35, who was arrested earlier this month, remain before the court.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca