Murder in Mohawk Territory: Sources Say Organized Crime Ramping up Violence Around Cannabis Shops

When Kane Montour looked into the pit, he saw a young man staring back at him with unblinking eyes.

He knew the kid was dead, but Montour called down to him anyway.

“Can you hear me?”

No response.

“Can you try to move? Can you try to blink?”

Nothing.

Montour is the co-coordinator of Kanesatake’s perimeter security team at a time when the community faces an explosion of gang-related violence. During his patrols on the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory, he’s seen people shot, cut open, beaten and left for dead.

He’s been there after hired arsonists torched pot shops over disputes within Kanesatake’s cannabis industry. His team was at the scene last winter when someone gunned down dispensary owner Normand Théoret in his home. Thankfully, Théoret survived the attempt on his life thanks to community members who carried his body into a car and rushed him to meet with an ambulance outside of town.

But something about the young man staring back at him hit Montour especially hard.

Someone had called Montour that afternoon, claiming a kid had fallen into the pit on the old Sulpician property. Decades ago, the property was a school run by the priests whose mission it was to convert Mohawks to Catholicism.

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After the building was abandoned and fell into disrepair, it became a hangout for teenagers looking to blow off steam. Eventually, someone smashed a hole into the concrete floor of the foundation. A hole big enough to squeeze through and lower themselves in.

Last summer, a girl slipped and fell 10 feet onto the hard ground. She suffered only scrapes and bruises before being rescued. But on Friday, Montour knew from the sheer amount of blood he saw that this was no slip-and-fall accident.

“I called (first responders) and told them not to bother trying to reanimate the kid. It looked like he had been dead for some time,” Montour said. “I remember there was a footprint leading to the hole and I thought we’d better do everything we can to preserve the crime scene.”

He sealed off the area with caution tape and wrangled the rest of the security team. No one except for first responders would be allowed through. By the time firefighters recovered the body, Montour’s suspicions were confirmed. The kid, who appeared to be in his early 20s, was dead. He wasn’t a member of the community.

Unwilling to leave the scene as police scoured the area, Montour stayed parked in his truck until he nodded off around 2:30 a.m. the next morning. He says he was immediately jolted from his sleep by a nightmare.

“I felt a knock at my window and it was the kid from the hole, still staring at me,” Montour said. “That woke me up. I wish I hadn’t seen him like that. I wish I hadn’t seen a lot of the things I see here.”

Police initially said they weren’t ruling anything out; it could have been an accident or maybe foul play. By Sunday, though, when a team of officers was deployed to search the wooded area around the pit for a weapon, it was clear they were investigating a murder.

For days, theories about the body spread through Kanesatake, where about 2,000 Mohawks live on a narrow strip of land overlooking the Lake of Two Mountains.

One theory was that the body might be connected to an incident in mid-May where two men were beaten by security outside a nearby dispensary.

It isn’t uncommon for security to get rough with aggressive customers, but photos sent to The Rover show one of the victims with blood smeared across his face and bare chest. The assailants had also smashed the rear window of his Jaguar.

By Monday, a Journal de Montréal report confirmed everyone’s worst fears: the victim had been shot, and his body was dumped into the pit. Sources close to the investigation told The Rover that the victim — 24-year-old Ronnie Gonzalez — had a criminal record, but nothing that automatically suggests involvement with organized crime.

In a post on Facebook, one community member called on people not to speculate or spread rumours about the investigation.

“Before anything else, I want to acknowledge the young man who lost his life,” wrote Amanda Simon, the former lands manager at the Kanesatake Mohawk Council. “This remains a tragedy, our thoughts are with his family, friends, loved ones and everyone affected by this loss.

“This is a tragedy — not an opportunity to create stories, spread misinformation or make an already painful situation more difficult for those directly affected.”

Two sources close to the investigation say it is possible Gonzalez was involved in a series of arsons targeting dispensaries on the territory. From June of 2024 to August of the following year, there was an average of nearly two arsons a month at dispensaries in Kanesatake.

One of the most dramatic ones saw Théoret’s shop, the Sweet Grass Lodge, burned to the ground in August 2025. The previous year, a man drove his car into the dispensary’s front porch and fired multiple rounds into the building before escaping in a stolen car.

These arsons came in the middle of a land deal involving Martin Robert, the Hells Angels Quebec lieutenant, and Théoret. That’s according to two police sources who say Robert is attempting to purchase lakeside Mohawk property through his wife, Annie Arbic, a Mohawk from Kanesatake.

Robert has not been charged with anything in connection to these cases but sources say it is noteworthy that someone with connections at the highest echelons of Quebec’s underworld has taken an interest in Mohawk real estate.

“These cannabis shops are big, cash-only businesses that require enormous investments to maintain and operate,” said one police source. “You can’t exactly go to the bank to get a loan, so that’s where big players in organized crime come in.”

There are dozens of dispensaries spread throughout the territory. While most are locally-owned shops that sell pot, hash and even magic mushrooms, some of the larger dispensaries also feature slot machines and bars that serve alcohol well past 3 a.m. 

Council Chief Serge “Otsi” Simon, whose daughter and son-in-law run a dispensary, said he’s worried about the influence of criminals from outside the territory taking over the trade.

“Some people came by my son-in-law’s shop and said, ‘You’re buying from us from now on,’” said Simon. “I think it’s obvious that it was a threat, but thankfully, they never followed up. All these people playing around with questionable partnerships, it’s gonna end up hurting us all. I’ve been warning people for years that it’s gonna just keep getting worse. And it is.”

Hells Angels wearing their full regalia have been spotted outside a few of the shops, and one dispensary — the Green Room — was the site of a gangland hit in the summer of 2021. The victim, gang leader Arsène Mompoint, was shot three times at close range before the gunman made off in a stolen jeep.

The gunman then abandoned the vehicle in a nearby cornfield and torched it. 

The Green Room was the first dispensary in Kanesatake to include gambling and alcohol on-site. Its owner, Gary Gabriel, used to run an illegal dump with his brother Robert, and has a criminal record that includes a pair of convictions for armed assault.

Robert Gabriel, meanwhile, owns a dispensary, bar and casino called High Times, which is the site of all-night parties and concerts that draw thousands of outsiders to the territory every summer.

Last week, Quebec’s Public Security Minister told The Eastern Door his office was within days of tabling an action plan to fight the rise of organized crime in Kanesatake. The minister, Ian Lafrenière, said people in the community are rising up and saying enough is enough.

Kanesatake hasn’t had a local police station since 2004.

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