A man who claimed he found a backpack containing an untraceable so-called ‘ghost’ gun, bullets and drugs on a beach in East End was sentenced on Tuesday to nine years in prison.
Mitchell Chean Ebanks, 55, had earlier admitted to possessing a Glock 17 9mm handgun, which had been fitted with an attachment that could convert it into a fully automatic weapon, along with 29 live rounds of 9mm ammunition.
The weapon and bullets, as well as 11.6 ounces of cocaine and 1.8 ounces of ganja, were found by police during a search of Ebanks’ home in Rennie Ebanks Road in West Bay on 30 May this year.
Police also recovered three magazines – a standard size one, an high-capacity one, and a drum-style one, the court heard.
Justice Cheryll Richards, passing sentence Tuesday, said the weapon seized by police was a Polymar80 firearm, based on a Glock design, which she said is known as a ‘ghost’ gun as it has no serial number, and is therefore untraceable.
The ‘automatic sear’, also called a Glock ‘switch’ or ‘chip’, when fitted to the weapon, she said, enabled it to be converted to a fully automatic firearm.
Normally, a Glock pistol can only fire one bullet each time the trigger is pulled. A weapon fitted with an automatic sear can fire multiple times with a single trigger pull, and will continue to fire until the magazine is empty or until the trigger is released, the judge explained.
“There is no evidence that any use was made of the gun,” she noted.
She pointed out that one of the three magazines found at Ebanks’ home could hold up to 100 rounds of ammunitions. The second could hold 30 rounds and the third 17.
Following his arrest on 30 May, Ebanks was interviewed by police the next day. During that interview, he told officers he had found the backpack on an East End beach on 27 May. He said when he realised there was cocaine in the bag, as he was a cocaine user, he decided to take it home.
He told police he was not sure what he would do with the gun and ammunition, but “maybe would keep it for his own protection”, Richards said.
In considering mitigating or aggravating factors in the case, the judge noted that Ebanks has 23 previous convictions, mostly involving drug offences, and, in 1997, had been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for grievous bodily harm. However, she accepted that he had never had a conviction for a firearms-related offence.
She noted that he had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse.
She said she considered the fact that the weapon was a “lethal barrelled firearm” and an untraceable ‘ghost’ gun as aggravating factors.
The fact that the gun was found with a quantity of drugs also indicated that the weapon was linked to the drug trade, she said.
Using a starting point of a seven-year sentence for the charge of possession of a prohibited firearm, Richards added two years for the aggravating factors, for a total of nine years in prison.
She also sentenced him to three years for the possession of the ammunition, to run concurrently.
The judge vacated a third charge, in relation to a count of illegal firearms possession of the same weapon.
The drug charges were remitted to the Summary Court, where they will be considered on Thursday, 14 Nov.
Ebanks heard his sentence via Zoom from Northward prison, where he had been remanded.
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