A man who police referred to as the “Dr. Frankenstein of weapons” after his arrest in Osoyoos pleaded guilty to a slew of charges.
Bradley Michael Friesen, 38, pleaded guilty to a total of 26 charges in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster on Oct. 5.
He owned up to many firearms related charges including multiple counts of possessing a prohibited or restricted firearm with ammunition, three counts of importing or exporting a firearm or component knowing it is unauthorized and three counts of manufacturing or transferring a firearm.
Friesen was arrested July 17 at the Nk’Mip Campground in Osoyoos where police seized numerous firearms and firearm-related prohibited devices from his van and tent the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit said last August.
Police reported that many of the devices found in Friesen’s van were stashed underneath a booster seat where his five-year-old son was sitting according to Sgt. Lindsay Houghton, who said Friesen was the “Dr. Frankestein” of guns. Two assault rifles and a sub-machine guns were among the items seized by police at the Nk'Mip Campground in Osoyoos from the man's van and tent.
Other firearms were seized from Friesen’s home and workshop in Surrey.
Police alleged upon his arrest that Friesen sold his wares over the internet to buyers in the U.S. and Australia. The CFSEU alleges Friesen was supplying mid-level crime groups.
The case was handled with cooperation from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Friesen was convicted in 2004 for attempted murder in B.C. Supreme Court in Penticton. According to media reports at the time, Friesen was attempting to collect a $600 debt from a man he shot in the stomach outside his Osoyoos home in 2001, and was later sentences to five years in a mental health facility.
A psychiatrist said at the sentencing hearing that Friesen “heard voices and experienced hallucinations,” according to a 2005 decision from the B.C. Court of Appeal, which denied a request to overturn the conviction.