A Canada Border Services Agency officer at the Blue Water Bridge asked Tanner Roberts, “Do you have any firearms or weapons?”
A Canada Border Services Agency officer at the Blue Water Bridge asked Tanner Roberts, “Do you have any firearms or weapons?”
The 27-year-old engineer from Utah, who was heading to Toronto for a week of sightseeing, said no. But after he was sent to a secondary inspection area at the bridge connecting the Sarnia area to Michigan around 9:30 pm on Oct. 7, another officer found a locked box behind the driver’s seat.
The officer opened the box and found a loaded, nine-millimetre pistol magazine and a box for a handgun. When asked where the gun was, Roberts pointed to a laundry bag in the back of his white Dodge Ram cargo van.
The officer found a Glock G43X nine-millimeter pistol. Roberts was arrested and accused of smuggling.
Shortly after midnight, the border agency’s criminal investigations unit arrived at the bridge and interviewed Roberts about the discovery.
“He admitted that he put the firearm in the laundry bag because he knew he could not bring the firearm to Canada and he stated officers would be less likely to search his dirty laundry bag,” federal prosecutor Brian Higgins said while reading an agreed statement of facts to a Sarnia courtroom.
On Thursday, Roberts pleaded guilty — over video from Utah — to the Customs Act charge of making a false statement and was fined $1,500. A second charge was dropped.
Defense lawyer Sarah Donohue said her client, who had no prior criminal record in either country, really was coming to Canada for tourism reasons at the time and made a mistake by not declaring the gun and ammunition.
“This is not a situation where Mr. Roberts is any sort of firearms smuggler in any way, shape or form. This is just a one-off in terms of his overall unblemished criminal history,” she said.
Higgins agreed Roberts wasn’t a smuggler, but pointed out he was being untruthful to the border officers.
“Until, essentially, the jig was up when he was at secondary,” he said.
Justice Mark Poland said Roberts “made a serious and criminal error by bringing a handgun into Canada and by lying to the border services officers.”
The judge added he didn’t want to get into a debate, but pointed out Canada has a different approach to gun control.
“Our laws are clear,” he said. “It’s not how we do things in Canada and that’s something that we’re quite proud of.”
Roberts declined a chance to address the court.
Both lawyers suggested the $1,500 fine, which Poland said was appropriate.
Donohue said Roberts, who was turned back to the US that night last fall, hopes to one day be able to visit Canada again.
A Florida man arrested in the fall of 2021 at the Blue Water Bridge in what some described as one of the largest gun seizures at a Southwestern Ontario border in recent memory was acquitted of all charges at trial in December and permitted to return to the US after being held in the Sarnia area for more than a year.
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