During the trial, Robert Michael Mero testified that neither the 21.5 grams of heroin, worth about $5,500, nor the loaded .38-calibre handgun police found in his 200-block Harper Street home were his and suggested they were actually planted by the man who tipped off police about the items.
But in a decision issued Friday, Justice Joel Groves poked holes in Mero's story.
The heroin was found in sock stuffed into a living room couch and the gun in an athletic bag when RCMP executed a search warrant on the home during the early morning hours of Jan. 8, 2016. Additionally, police found a bulletproof vest draped over a kitchen table chair.
On the heroin, Groves noted that score sheets - used to keep track of who owed how much for drugs sold - were found in the home. Mero testified they were actually for keeping track of winnings of fellow players while playing online poker. Groves was sceptical.
"Why would it be necessary for him to write down the amounts of others when, generally speaking, games such as this keep track of everyone's scores?" he said.
On the gun, Mero testified he never owned a gun except for one he used for skeet shooting. But Groves noted there were also shells in the bag in which the gun was found and a box of matching shells found in a kitchen drawer as well as shells for a different gun found in a basement bedroom.
It was all too coincidental for Groves who said that in order to believe the accused, he would also have to believe a "mysterious person" not only planted the gun but the shells found in the kitchen drawer.
On the bulletproof vest, Mero, who said he used to sell drugs but no longer did so, maintained he bought the vest in 2014 after getting a "duty to warn" statement from the RCMP saying he was in danger. According to Groves, Mero further testified he thought the vest was in the closet and "kind of forgot about it but still knew it was there."
Groves did not believe Mero on that count as well.
"It is not in the closet, it's hanging within a few seconds reach from anywhere in the kitchen or anywhere in the living room on the back of a chair in the kitchen," Groves said. "That is odd and unexplained."
The man who gave RCMP the tip had gone to police after getting into an argument with Mero over a drug deal gone bad, Groves said. Along with contending the heroin and gun were planted, Mero denied there was an argument.
Given that a drug deal gone bad suggests someone lost a lot of money, Groves found Mero's contention that $5,500 worth of heroin plus a gun had been sacrificed to set him up "simply makes no sense."
Mero, who now lives in Quesnel where he is on a methadone program, will remain out on bail while awaiting sentencing. But he must now report to the parole officer three times per week - two of them in person - up from once per week.
