Man who sold firearms to undercover agents gets eight-year prison term

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A man who killed his friend by accident a decade ago by shooting him in the back while handling an illegal firearm pleaded guilty on Tuesday to selling guns to an undercover officer two years ago.

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Jonathan Mputu Bijimine, 34, was sentenced to an eight-year prison term at the Montreal courthouse after he pleaded guilty to a long series of charges before Quebec Court Judge Erick Vanchestein, including having 50 grams of cannabis inside a detention center. With time served factored into the sentence, Mputu has a 62-month prison term left to serve.

The judge agreed with a joint recommendation on the sentence made by defense lawyer Gary Martin and prosecutor Éric Poudrier.

Mputu was among a dozen people arrested in October 2020 as part of a Montreal police investigation into a network selling firearms in and around Montreal. The goal of the investigation was to get semi-automatic assault-style rifles, like the AR-15, off the streets. On May 1, 2020, the AR-15 rifle was included in a long list of assault-style rifles classified as prohibited weapons by the federal government.

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Poudrier told the judge that the first firearm Mputu sold while being investigated was a Glock pistol. After having exchanged a series of text messages with an undercover agent working for the police, Mputu met with his customer from him, on June 6, 2020, in the parking lot of a hotel in Laval and sold the gun for $5,000.

More than a month later, on Aug. 19, 2020, Mputu met with an agent outside the same hotel and sold another pistol and a silencer for $6,500.

“It was always the objective of the undercover agents to obtain (AR-15s) and they made an agreement with Mr. Mputu to purchase two long firearms for $15,000,” Poudrier said.

Mputu was arrested in October 2020 when he showed up in Mirabel to meet with two double agents. Two semi-automatic rifles were found inside the trunk of the vehicle he arrived in. Another firearm was seized at an Airbnb he was residing at while under investigation. When the 11 other people were arrested, police seized a few more pistols as well as small quantities of crack cocaine, heroin and cannabis.

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Mputu’s criminal record was deposited into evidence on Tuesday. Poudrier asked the judge to take note of a 2012 case, where Mputu pleaded guilty to a manslaughter and the illegal possession of a firearm in the death of his longtime friend Jonathan Gédéon. Mputu admitted he was with Gédéon and another friend, on Jan. 19, 2012, in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant on Décarie Blvd. while handling a prohibited firearm. The gun went off by accident and Gédéon was shot in the back.

The judge who sentenced Mputu that year to a six-year prison term ruled that while the shooting was accidental, it occurred while he was committing a crime, the illegal possession of the firearm.

Another person arrested as part of the Montreal police investigation in 2020 was Jonathan Klor, 35, of Pierrefonds, the former leader of a street gang based on the West Island. In 2012, Klor was sentenced to a 14-year prison term after he was convicted of the attempted murders of three gang rivals. The attempted murders were carried out in 2009.

On April 1, Klor pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis with the intent to traffic and was sentenced to a 30-month prison term. He was acquired of two charges related to a loaded firearm seized during the investigation in 2020.

Some of the other people charged in the same investigation have court dates scheduled in July and August.

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