Winnipeg man pleads guilty to over a dozen gun-related charges, including manufacturing and distributing 3D printed weapons, of which one he claims was used at a shooting last year at the Red River Ex.
Blake Ellison Crate, 24, pleaded guilty in a Manitoba courtroom Tuesday to 13 crimes that occurred between July 2021 – June 2022. These included manufacturing and selling 3D printed firearms.
In his ruling, Alain Huberdeau stated that this was a “sophisticated business operation.”
“As we all know, firearms are inherently dangerous, given they are expressly designed to wound or kill,” Judge Huberdeau said while delivering his sentence. “Possessing them without a licence, manufacturing and trafficking them is both shocking and chilling, and is behaviour that violates all societal norms.”
A court hearing heard that RCMP officers executed a search at Ellison Crate’s house in September 2021. They found an iPad, two cellphones, and a revolver without a serial number.
“Both devices contained social media messaging – messaging openly communicating firearms trafficking both prior to and subsequent to Ellison-Crate’s arrest by RCMP,” Huberdeau said in his review of the facts.
In Nov. 2021 the Canada Border Services Agency contacted the Winnipeg Police about a package intercepted containing firearm parts.
The next month, in June of 2022 the Winnipeg Police arrested Ellison Crate and executed a second search warrant at his residence, uncovering several parts for firearms and two phones, as well as three 3D-printed receivers.
“Upon reviewing the content of both seized phones, it was learned Ellison-Crate communicated with individuals through Kijiji for the purposes of recruiting for individuals to 3D-print handgun receivers on his behalf,” Huberdeau said, adding Ellison-Crate would give these people the files he wanted printed, telling them they were video game controllers.
Ellison-Crate was found guilty of conspiring to traffic in guns even after his arrest and imprisonment in June 2022.
Huberdeau claimed that Huberdeau had captured the conspiracy in several telephone communications recorded at the provincial correctional institution.
During these calls, the judge stated that Ellison-Crate spoke with a partner to claim responsibility for trafficking several firearms as reported in media and police releases.
Ellison-Crate, who claimed credit for a number of things, told the court that he had trafficked a 3D printed Glock pattern handgun which he said had been used by a teenager in June 2022 at the Red River Exhibition.
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“It is clear that these are very serious offences,” Huberdeau said, adding the court will never know how many firearms Ellison-Crate manufactured and or trafficked.
“Although we will never know the true extent of the harm that he has committed and has inflicted on our community, we know that because of his actions, the streets and neighbourhoods of Winnipeg, as well as the province as a whole, will be a far less safer place.”
Huberdeau accepted a joint Crown and Defence recommendation for a total sentence of 44-years for all 13 charges. The judge did order that the sentences be served consecutively for all but 2 counts, and not concurrently.
Huberdeau, after accepting Ellison-Crate’s guilty plea asked him if he wished to make any further remarks.
“I just want to say I’m sorry,” Ellison-Crate told the judge. “It’s going to take a long time to rebuild the relationships I’ve broken with my family. I hope they will forgive me one day.
Huberdeau responded by telling Ellison-Crate that he had left a ‘trail of destruction’ in his wake.
“At the end of the day, we will never know in the end what type of damage and destruction that you’ve inflicted on this community,” he said.