Ex-Mountie pleads guilty to cocaine charge

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This article was published 14/04/2021 (1978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former Manitoba RCMP officer, who was once connected to a puppet club of the Hells Angels, is headed back to prison after pleading guilty to a cocaine charge.

An emotional Wayne Shuttleworth, 50, told a Winnipeg court he wanted to “get (the hearing) over with” as he pleaded guilty Monday to one charge of illegal drug possession for the purpose of trafficking.

Crown attorney Laura Perron said Shuttleworth was arrested after a four-month investigation in which RCMP officers had found more than 350 grams of cocaine in his Winnipeg home in 2018.

“He was what we would deem a ‘stash person.’ He was being paid for his services of doing that,” Perron told Justice Candace Grammond.

Jonathan Pinx, the lawyer for Shuttleworth, told court “there were issues with the search warrant” when police entered the home, adding the Crown and defence teams had negotiated a plea bargain in which a second charge of trafficking illegal substances was stayed.

Both the Crown and defence said Shuttleworth is expected to serve time in custody as part of the plea deal.

Shuttleworth is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 28 to allow time for him to make arrangements for his two special needs children, and to see them through the first weeks of their school year.

The ex-Mountie had been sentenced to three years in Stony Mountain Penitentiary for trafficking guns for the Zig Zag Crew — a puppet club of the Hells Angels — in 2010. He was one of 31 people arrested in Project Divide, a 13-month organized crime investigation that relied heavily on a gang associate who was an undercover informant.

Shuttleworth served as an RCMP officer from 1991 to 1994, but left the force because of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had suffered an injury while driving a truck more than a decade ago and was on permanent disability, lawyers said during the 2010 trial.

Lawyers told the courts at the time that Shuttleworth had been in financial distress after turning in his badge and had turned to the organized crime network as a way to find camaraderie and make money for his young son’s birthday party.

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jsrutgers