It's too bad U.S. customs can't or won't stop all the illegal guns coming into Canada.

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/firestar/

On April 7, 1997, the Arrowhead Pawn Shop in Jonesboro, Georgia took possession, from a gun distributor, of a Firestar, a .45 calibre Spanish-made handgun. Arrowhead owner, Arthur Banks, put the steel-framed semi-automatic pistol in the glass showcase at the back of the store. It was known on the street as a little “pocket rocket”, for its compact size and power. The asking price was $600.

The Firestar .45's first owner

Christonia Woods was a small-time drug dealer in Clayton County, Georgia who felt his job required him to carry some protection. For his 21st birthday,Woods wanted a gun, initially, something shiny, big, with a bit of stopping power and he knew just the place to go. He visited the Arrowhead Pawn Shop with his friend Shannon Wilson. Wilson remembers that day, April 29, 1997.

“He wanted something chrome and shiny just for the thrill of having it, you know. But we looked at many guns. He picked out, you know, like the Dirty Harry, .657, the .44 magnum. He started picking out some huge guns he liked that one.”

But, then, Wilson recalled, his friend Christonia Woods spotted the Firestar .45.

“And he said, no, I like this one. I want this pearl. He wanted something pretty.”

The birth of Michael James

That same year that the Firestar .45 arrived at the Arrowhead Pawn Shop and ended up in Christonia Woods’ possession, 2,000 kilometres away in Jamaica, the James family welcomed the birth of a baby boy, called Michael.

The story of how the lives of Michael James, from Jamaica and a gun, from Jonesboro, Georgia end up colliding in a suburb of Toronto five years, eight months and 27 days after the Firestar .45 first left the Arrowhead Pawn Shop, is the story of FIRESTAR .45.

By the summer of 1999, two drug dealers from Chicago, Dante Fort and Andre Ray Peck, had moved into Jonesboro, Georgia. Their aim was to take over the neighborhood drug business. In their way, was Christonia Woods.

Woods met his friend, Shannon Wilson at their local hang out, Applebee’s, on September 21, 1999. Wilson convinced Woods to remove the gun from his car where he usually kept the Firestar.

“I told him if you get caught with it now and you have a felony and even though it was legal at the time you purchased it they're gonna hold you accountable for having that gun because you're a convicted felon now. You will do five years plus whatever they stopped you for, they're gonna get you for that. So it's five years plus.”

Killing the gun's owner

On September 22, 1999, Woods went to see friends Christopher Lynch and Marcus Robinson at 701 Mount Zion Road where Lynch was selling marijuana from the apartment. Dante Fort and Andre Peck had been there earlier that day to buy some marijuana. It was late at night when there was a knock at the door. Fort and Peck had returned, but this time they had a gun, a 9mm Glock, with them. Marcus Robinson remembers the moment.

“He kicked the door back open, that’s when I stuck my head back out the door and like man, they got the gun and you know I’m saying, I see it a lot on TV, but I had never seen it like that close-up. So that just threw me into shock right there.”

Marcus Robinson barely escaped the night that Woods was killed.

Robinson fled down the hall and saved his life by smashing through a back window. Four hundred dollars in cash and marijuana were taken from the kitchen. Christonia Woods and Christopher Lynch were lying on the floor dead. They had been shot execution-style. When Woods had needed his protection, his Firestar .45 most, it was nowhere near him. He had taken his friend, Shannon’s, advice and left it at home.

Marcus Robinson’s later testimony at trial would send Fort and Peck to prison for life for the double homicide.

The gun disappears

But, what happened to the Firestar .45? Christonia’s mother, Celia Taylor, said that it was probably stolen by one of his friends. It was Shannon Wilson who remembered a conversation he had with Celia. A month after Woods death, Wilson visited Christonia’s mother.

“She was like, what am I gonna do with the gun, what am I gonna do with this?” Wilson thinks Taylor sold her son’s gun. “She was always talking about needing money, getting money.”

The Iron Pipeline

It would take the Firestar four years to arrive in Canada, traveling along a route well-used by gun dealers and well-known to authorities. The I-95 highway traces the American Atlantic coast and is known as the Iron Pipeline or the Blue Steel Highway. It’s along this interstate that tens of thousands of guns a year are purchased and sold and then smuggled from the U.S. into Canada.

From Florida, the I-95 cuts through states with some of the weakest gun laws in the U.S., including Georgia. Guns from the southern states then find their way to states with some of the toughest gun laws, such as New York and Massachusetts. The Iron Pipeline, or Blue Steel Highway, was the route along which the Firestar .45, once owned by Christonia Woods, would travel on its way to Toronto.

In 1998, the James family had begun its own journey to Canada where they believed they could escape Jamaica’s violent gun culture and high murder rate. Michael James’s older brother arrived that year and settled with his aunt in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb. By 2000, he was joined by his mother.

The Firestar .45 in Canada

Peel Regional Police say the Firestar .45 crossed the border into Ontario in 2001. It had been brought there by a Georgia drug dealer who needed protection when he was doing business in Ontario. Detective Dan Valleau worked on tracing the gun’s journey into Canada.

“He smuggled it over because he wanted a gun when he was in Canada but he didn’t want to keep smuggling this gun over and over again.”

The drug dealer from Georgia wanted to find someone in Mississauga to hold onto the gun until he returned for his next drug deal. A contact in Mississauga happened to be close friends with the James family. Valleau says the teenaged brother of Michael James agreed to store the gun for the drug dealer.

“I call these kids gun lockers. A lot of gangsters will ask kids to hold their guns for them and there will be some kind of monetary reward for doing that,” says Valleau.

A tragic end for the James family

By October 2002, the James family, including Michael, his older brother and two sisters, were all together living in Mississauga. Michael’s older brother had stashed the Firestar .45 in a dresser drawer in his bedroom, a room he shared with Michael. The little boy was warned by his brother never to go into that drawer.

January 3, 2003, Christmas decorations still filling the house, Michael and a playmate were in his bedroom. Michael’s mother was at work at one of the local malls. His older brother had gone out. An older sister was babysitting, but was downstairs, away from the two young children playing in the bedroom.

The drawer that Michael had been warned never to go into proved to be too much of a temptation to the two children. The gun, the Firestar .45 that had begun its journey in Jonesboro, Georgia was taken out of the drawer. The children argued about whether or not it was real. The safety catch was off. Michael’s playmate’s little hands wrapped around the sensitive trigger of the semi-automatic pistol. And at 2:20 p.m. a bullet hit Michael in the face. By 3:15 p.m., he was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Months later, the Firestar .45 was destroyed by Peel Regional Police, reduced to the molten metal from which it was first made.

The journey of the gun had ended. It lasted almost as long as Michael James’s life.