Two Burnaby men are facing 22 charges after a series of commercial robberies and break-and-enters in the Lower Mainland.
Nicholas Lenard Traviss, 20, and Dillon Juel Stanton, 26, were arrested on March 13 by Coquitlam RCMP. Police declined to say what led to the arrest, but said they compared similarities between the robberies.
Dillon Stanton, Nicholas Traviss charged w/ 10 counts armed robbery. Stanton also charged w/ 1 count of robbery w/ firearm & poss other ID's pic.twitter.com/ySg0l1G3Wb
— Kat (@katslepian) March 28, 2017
Mounties recovered a replica handgun during the arrest. They subsequently searched a storage locker in Coquitlam and found property that had been reported stolen in four separate break-ins.
Officers recovered 13 firearms — at least four of which had illegal modifications, including filed-off serial numbers. They also retrieved cigarettes, vaping supplies, video games, gaming consoles, and lottery tickets. Police are currently returning items to their owners.
Each man faces 10 counts of robbery with a firearm. Stanton also faces one count of possessing a firearm without a licence and one count of possessing the identity documents of another person.
Neither of them has gang ties, according to Insp. Bryon Massie, but are known to police. They remain in custody.
The crime spree ranged from Feb. 20 to March 13 and involved seven different RCMP jurisdictions: Burnaby, Surrey, Langley, Ridge Meadows, Abbotsford, and Mission.
Here’s a sampling: The video games were taken from a March 12 Port Coquitlam robbery, the firearms from a March 8 Mission break-in, and the vaping supplies from a March 5 Langley break-in.
“All [robberies] with the exception of one were committed with a firearm,” Massie said.
The bulk of the robberies were carried out with the replica pistol that turned out to be an airsoft pistol, Cpl. Michael McLaughlin noted.
“The way you can tell the difference between and airsoft pistol and a regular pistol it that you can’t,” said McLaughlin. “If someone pointed this at me – and I know my guns – I wouldn’t know if this was real or not."