Gun trafficking mother sentenced to three years after trying to sell children’s toy guns to Windsor cops

After the success of her first illegal firearm sale — a handgun that fires shotgun shells, the plan for the second sale was to try and rip off the buyer with a pair of toy weapons. Both times, the purchaser was an undercover cop. On Thursday, Kaylee Coates, 24, smiling and waving to her infant daughter in the public gallery of a courtroom in Windsor, was sentenced to three years in jail.

Coates hadn’t even been on the police radar over the course of a year-old undercover operation targeting an alleged cross-border gun smuggling network. The then-girlfriend of one of the main targets, Curtis Elliott, Coates was brought in as a “runner”. Two people — one in Canada and one in the U.S. — are still at large. The wanted Canadian is Philip Kwaku Nkrumah, 31. Police believe he’s in either Toronto or Windsor. The Detroit fugitive is Caron Williams, 23. Those arrested include Curtis Marcelles Elliott, 29, Roy Hill, 27, Kaylee Elaine Coates, 23, Donilo Frank Marentette and Adonios Coutsogiannakis, 51, and Kevin Lewis, 28, all from Windsor. Police also arrested Franco Carmelo Marentette-Derose, 27, of Lakeshore, and Justin James, 35, from London. “If an organized crime group wants a gun, these are the people they are going to."

The fake guns didn’t fool the fake buyer, but then Coates — whose cellphone was on with Elliott listening in — started punching, biting and pulling the hair of the undercover operator. “Just do it! Just do it!” intercepted recordings, allegedly of Elliott in a nearby parked Dodge Charger, could be heard screaming on the phone, directing his girlfriend to grab the cash.