Unlicensed London pot shop reopens after it’s hit by gunfire

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An unsanctioned pot shop in downtown London has reopened three weeks after it was riddled with bullets in an overnight shooting that remains unsolved.

A security guard had heard several “loud bangs” and found bullet holes in the glass of a building at 264 Dundas St., west of Wellington Street, on Nov. 25 around 3:10 a.m. police previously said. The store wasn’t open at the time and nobody was injured.

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More than a dozen bullets struck the rear entrance to the pot shop, where at least two bullet holes were still visible inside the store when it was back operating Tuesday.

The business opened earlier this year without a licence from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, the province’s pot regulator, saying it’s Indigenous-run and immune from Canada’s cannabis laws.

The store operates in a ground-floor unit of a two-storey building owned by Erin Barletta, property records show. She is the wife of Vincent Barletta, the former owner of the Beef Baron strip club and brother of Robert Barletta, an alleged high-ranking member of the Hells Angels Montreal chapter.

There were four unsanctioned dispensaries operating in London earlier this year, but the Ontario Provincial Police-led cannabis enforcement team raided two during the summer. The August crackdown targeted two Spirit River locations, one of them operating out of a trailer at 72 Wellington St., the other a downtown storefront at 685 Richmond St. The Wellington Street store reopened out of a new trailer parked in front of the shuttered one only to be raided again within days in October.

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