Defence and prosecuting counsels presented competing views of what to make of a crack pipe and metal tray found among a cache of guns and ammunition in a Prince George townhouse during closing arguments Thursday in the trial for Ryan John Moore.
Moore, 22, who faces 15 firearms counts stemming from a Nov. 30, 2011 raid on his then home at 198 Victoria St., is claiming he had no knowledge of the guns police found in the attic.
His lawyer, Daniel Gellar, suggested the pipe and tray were planted there to set up his client.
"He was swimming in an element of people where almost anything was possible," Gellar told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ron Tindale. "Someone could've put them there for their own safekeeping, someone could have put them there in fact to prejudice Mr. Moore in this matter."
Some 2,000 rounds of ammunition, a loaded 12-gauge shotgun, six rifles, a nine-millimetre Berretta handgun with ammunition and two prohibited magazines were found in the attic.
During testimony, Moore had said he kept the pipe and tray underneath the bathroom sink so he could smoke crack with the fan on to prevent odours from spreading around the house.
The home's atmosphere was described as chaotic with a constant flow of known criminals and addicts entering and leaving at all hours of the day, usually to buy and consume the drugs Moore has admitted to selling.
However, Crown prosecutor Geoffrey McDonald noted only Moore's fingerprints were found on the pipe and tray. He also noted a gun cleaning kit was found in the bedroom.
It was one of a handful of points where Gellar and McDonald differed.
Gellar argued Moore was someone who did not take great care to hide his stash of drugs, would leave with others still in the home and characterized the scene as a "chaotic mess."
But McDonald said Moore talked about how well he hid his heroin during testimony and contended he took the same approach with the firearms.
"You can't hide them in a fruit can with the bottom hollowed out," McDonald said. "You have to put them somewhere else, you have make them difficult to access but reasonably close so you can access them and that is where the attic access is so ideal."
Among the evidence presented was a photo, taken by Moore's girlfriend several days after his arrest, showing a hole in the attic's wall providing access to the neighbouring townhouse. Police made no note of the hole during a check of the attic after the guns were removed but Gellar argued they did not look hard enough.
McDonald called the photo a "red herring or a distraction" noting it gave access to a recently-constructed townhouse that the manager was unable to rent to anyone until four months after Moore's arrest. He maintained it was in such an obvious location that police would have noticed the hole if it was there in the first place.
Moore's father is Billy Moore, the president of the Prince George Renegades Motorcycle Club, a puppet group of the Vancouver Hells Angels, who died under mysterious circumstances in 2005. Police are treating the incident as a murder.
