The trial began this week for a 44-year-old Hope man once dubbed “the Dr. Frankenstein of guns.”
Bradley Michael Friesen has in the past been convicted of importing and selling silencers and gun parts used to convert Glock pistols to fully automatic.
Friesen is facing four charges of possessing firearm parts while unauthorized and one count of knowingly importing firearm parts while unauthorized.
The eight-day trial began in Chilliwack provincial court on Thursday (May 5) starting with Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) witnesses for the Crown.
Friesen was out on parole for trafficking in handgun parts in October 2019 when a CBSA officer testified he intercepted packages containing silencers at Vancouver International Airport with a mailing address in Hope.
CBSA agents intercepted three separate packages containing the prohibited devices.
On Nov. 14, 2019, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit-BC (CFSEU-BC), assisted by CBSA and Hope RCMP, arrested Friesen on a number of firearms-related offences and conducted a search warrant of his residence in Hope.
He had been on parole and was on a lifetime prohibition for firearms, restricted firearms, prohibited weapons, prohibited devices and prohibited ammunition from a 2001 conviction when he was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2014.
Friesen was in the news in 2018 when he successfully sued over a traffic accident that took place before he was imprisoned on the firearms charges. In a lawsuit launched from prison, he sued a driver who collided with him in 2011 in Langley and was awarded $88,000 in damages.
Friesen wore a grey sweatshirt in the prisoner’s box in courtroom 205 this week. He occasionally gestured as if he was in some back pain or discomfort.
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“Bradley Friesen is a well-known offender who is alleged to have showed a complete disregard for the safety of the public, and a complete disregard for the conditions placed on him upon his release into the public,” CFSEU-BC spokesperson Sgt. Brenda Winpenny said in a November 2019 press release.
“The ability of the CFSEU-BC to successfully work with our many provincial partners has taken potentially lethal items off the street and put a dangerous offender back behind bars.”
None of the current allegations against Friesen have been proven in court. The trial continues.
– with a file from Matthew Claxton, Langley Advance Times
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