Vernon judge sends man to jail for loaded gun in man’s purse at Status Nightclub – Vernon News

A man who carried a loaded pistol in his ‘murse’ while at Status nightclub in Vernon has been sentenced to 30 months in prison.

In a ruling yesterday, Provincial Court Judge David Patterson sentenced Jesse James Monteith, 23, to prison for possession of a loaded, prohibited or restricted firearm – a charge for which he had already pleaded guilty.

The charge stems from an incident on April 9, 2023 in which RCMP officers were called to Status Night Club for a report of a man with a handgun.

Court documents state that in the smoking room, a man opened his Louis Vuitton motse (man’s handbag) and showed someone a handgun, claiming it was real.

Police arrived and identified the man with the gun as Monteith. Upon his arrest, officers found a Glock 17 9mm caliber pistol, $2,055 in cash and Monteith’s Canadian passport inside his walls.

“The gun was seized and secured. It was loaded when seized with one 9mm cartridge in the chamber and 17 other 9mm cartridges in the overcapacity magazine,” they read in court documents.

Cops later determined the gun was legal in Canada, but Monteith was not the legal owner, nor did he have a firearms license. The investigation also revealed that Monteith had no legal way to acquire the gun and the gun’s registered owner failed to report it stolen.

Court documents say the gun was linked to a 2020 Kelowna “straw buyer” – a person who legally buys a gun and then illegally resells it without reporting the transaction.

“Straw buyers may not be involved in other crimes themselves, but the guns they give away or sell are used in all types of crimes, including shootings, robberies, home invasions home and the murders,” we can read in the judgment.

Monteith said he had the gun in Status because he was “trying to look cool and tough” — something court documents say would require no ammunition for the gun to do.

Monteith was sentenced to 30 months in prison, prohibited from using a firearm for at least 10 years and ordered to submit a sample of his DNA to a national criminal database.