Officers made purchases from Langley drug trafficking line after finding business card on woman who overdosed
A business card for a dial-a-dope operation found on a woman who had died by drug overdose led RCMP to a Langley condo with $129,000 worth of drugs, including fentanyl and cocaine.
Recommended Videos
Mounties used the phone number on the card to set up a sting that began with surveillance and five drug purchases by two undercover officers in late 2021, followed by 17 drug possession and trafficking and firearm charges against Kyle Campagna, 30.
After a five-day trial in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, Campagna was found guilty of five drug trafficking offences and seven drug possession offences. But he was found not guilty of illegally possessing an assault rifle, Ruger handgun and ammunition, according to the judgment by Justice Baljinder Kaur Gim.
Campagna was found guilty of the possession charges even though he didn’t live in the suite and claimed only to work for the suite’s tenant, a woman who also faces charges in the case.
Campagna said he was only visiting the suite when police raided it on Dec. 8, 2021, and arrested him while he was taking a shower, Gim wrote.
The search found various bulk and packaged illegal drugs in plain view in a bedroom and the living room, most of it in a clear storage container with drawers and in a plastic grocery bag, along with a “large amount” of Canadian bills.
Officers also found two large bundles of drug line business cards with the same phone number as the one found on the dead woman, she said.
The drugs seized included mostly fentanyl, but also powdered cocaine in bulk and in various baggies, rock cocaine, carfentanil, methamphetamine, Xanax, pink and green substances analyzed as a mixture of fentanyl and etizolam and in some cases W-19.
Officers also found 34 pills that analysis found were prescription hydromorphone, and loose and bundled cash that totalled $9,700, according to the judgment.
The rifle, loaded pistol and ammunition were found in a box on a shelf, the judge wrote.
A defence witness, who testified he was working for a drug line operating out of the suite in exchange for rent beginning in July 2021, said Campagna lived in Richmond with his girlfriend. But he said his high school buddy became involved in an intimate relationship at the same time with the suite’s tenant and would sleep there occasionally.
He testified Campagna only answered the phone for him when he was napping and that Campagna accompanied him when he delivered drugs, but wouldn’t possess them, the judgment said. And he denied Crown’s submission Campagna was helping to run the drug line.
The undercover officers, who can’t be identified under a publication ban, testified they directly bought drugs from “Teddy,” whom they identified as Campagna, the judge wrote.
On the first buy, the officer handed him $60 and Teddy handed him two packages of “pink.” Teddy then gave him an extra package and said “this is for the phone being down,” because the number hadn’t been available 24/7 as promised, the judgment said.
The second officer who purchased cocaine testified she received it from another dealer but paid her money to Teddy. She said Teddy told her his boss had just bought the drug line and they were making changes, “including providing a better product.”
Campagna argued he wasn’t involved in trafficking, but Crown told the trial there was a “great deal of evidence” that he had possession of the drugs in the suite.
The judge said to find Campagna guilty of possession for the purpose of trafficking, “I do not have to find that he lived at the suite.”
To determine if he had “constructive” possession, “I cannot ignore the volume of drugs and cash” in the suite while he was there while the suite’s tenant was out of town, she said.
And she ruled that it was Campagna who dealt with the two undercover officers.
Along with other evidence, this supports that “the only reasonable inference is that Mr. Campagna was involved in the drug-trafficking operation being operated out the suite,” Gim wrote.
But she also said Crown hadn’t proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he was in possession of the firearms and ammunition.