The Gun Turned Up While They Were Inventorying an Impounded Car, and the Warrant That Followed Produced Two More, a Machete and Fentanyl: Grand Falls-Windsor RCMP Charge Robert James Reid, 31, and Suzy Anthony, 39 (September 16, 2026)

GRAND FALLS-WINDSOR — The traffic stop produced a ticket. The tow produced the gun. Just before one o’clock in the morning on Monday, September 14, 2026, RCMP officers on proactive patrol in Grand Falls-Windsor stopped a speeding car on Cromer Avenue and found the 31-year-old man behind the wheel had neither a valid driver’s licence nor valid insurance. They wrote him up under the Highway Traffic Act and seized and impounded the vehicle. It was only afterwards, while officers were inventorying what was inside the impounded car, that they came across a prohibited firearm — and that discovery is what produced a Criminal Code search warrant, executed on the same vehicle, that turned up a second firearm, two imitation firearms, ammunition, a machete, several knives, suspected fentanyl, illicit cannabis and cash.

Robert James Reid, 31, and Suzy Anthony, 39, both of Grand Falls-Windsor, were arrested and held in custody. The Newfoundland and Labrador RCMP published the file on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, and says the investigation is continuing and further charges are possible.

The Inventory Is the Hinge

The sequence here matters more than any single item on the seizure list. Nothing about the stop itself suggested a firearm. The car was speeding; the driver was unlicensed and uninsured; those are Highway Traffic Act matters, and a ticket and an impound is where they normally end.

What changed the file is the inventory. When police seize and impound a vehicle they catalogue its contents, and the RCMP says a prohibited firearm was located in the course of that cataloguing. The force then did not simply carry on searching. It went and got a Criminal Code search warrant for the impounded vehicle and executed that before recovering the rest. Everything on the seizure list except the first prohibited firearm comes out of the warranted search, not the inventory.

The release does not say how long the gap between the inventory and the warrant was, where the vehicle was held in the interval, or when the warrant was granted. It does not say who was in the car besides the driver, and it does not explain how Suzy Anthony — who is never described as the driver — comes to be charged.

Two Real Guns and Two That Are Not

Counting the firearms in this file requires reading the release twice. The lead says officers located a prohibited firearm during the inventory. The warrant paragraph then lists “a firearm, two imitation firearms” among the items seized. That reads as two real firearms in total — one from the inventory, one from the warrant — plus two imitations. The force never totals them and never says so directly, and the photograph the RCMP published with the release carries a caption referring to a shotgun and handguns in the plural, which does not obviously match either count.

Imitation firearms are not a footnote. Under the Criminal Code an imitation is a weapon for the purposes of several offences, including possession for a dangerous purpose, and it does not need to be capable of firing anything. Their presence alongside real firearms is what the charge heading “possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose” may well be resting on, though the force does not say which object any count attaches to.

The release publishes no class, calibre, make, model or serial number for either real firearm beyond the word “prohibited” applied to the first, no round count for the ammunition, and no statement about whether either weapon was reported stolen or has been sent for tracing.

The Fentanyl Has No Number Attached to It

Suspected fentanyl, illicit cannabis and cash are all on the seizure list, and none of the three carries a figure. There is no weight for the fentanyl, no dosage-unit estimate, no street value, no weight for the cannabis, and no dollar amount for the cash.

More striking, there is no drug charge. Every one of the seven charge headings the RCMP publishes is a weapons or firearms heading. No count under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act appears, no possession-for-the-purpose count, no trafficking count, and no proceeds-of-crime count attached to the cash. The force says the investigation is continuing and further charges are possible, which is the only indication that any of that may change.

What Is Not Reported

No file or occurrence number. No breakdown of which accused faces which counts, and no statement of how many counts each faces in total. No weight, value or dosage figure for anything seized. No description of the vehicle. No explanation of Anthony’s connection to the car or the driver. No named unit beyond the Grand Falls-Windsor detachment, and no quoted officer — Corporal Jesse O’Donaghey appears only as the media contact. No outcome from the court appearance the release says was scheduled for the day before publication.

The release also contains an internal inconsistency this briefing does not resolve: the opening paragraph places the stop near Centennial Field, while the paragraph that follows places it near Shanawdithit Centennial Park. Both descriptions are the force’s own.

No gang, street gang, criminal organization or outlaw motorcycle club has been named by the Newfoundland and Labrador RCMP in this file. None is named or implied here, and no profile page on this site is linked, because none has been alleged by police.

These allegations have not been tested in court.