KINGSTON—A paraplegic gangster with ties to the GTA has been granted limited parole after serving more than two years in prison on convictions for drug trafficking and assembling a massive stockpile of firearms and explosives.

Shane Kenneth (Wheels) Maloney, 42, had earlier served time for supervising the beating of a Montreal police officer in Mexico.

At a parole hearing at Collins Bay penitentiary on Wednesday morning, Maloney was granted six months of day parole to be served in a halfway house.

He is part way through a 10-year prison sentence that was reduced to less than six years for time served.

Maloney said that he eventually plans to move to the GTA, but that society has nothing to fear from him.

“I want to go to Toronto,” he told the parole board panel in a soft, serious voice. “I just want to live a peaceful, quiet life, for the rest of my life,” he said, adding he wants to run a racing engine shop.

Maloney was part of the Wolfpack Alliance, a multiracial, pan-Canadian association of mostly millennial criminals who have been active in the GTA and other major Canadian cities. He became paraplegic in a motorcycle accident at age 20 and has complained of severe back pain and psychological distress while in custody.

He said he has developed osteoarthritis in his wrists because of the strain of operating his wheelchair.

Much of his sentence has been spent in seclusion after prison authorities successfully argued that his metal wheelchair could be used to smuggle drugs, or as a weapon by him or against him.

Maloney, who split his time between Montreal, Vancouver and a farm near Cornwall before his 2012 arrest, said he now owns nothing but his wheelchair.

He said that he made much of his previous money through an insurance settlement and real estate purchases.

Maloney pleaded guilty in February 2017 in Quebec to illegally stockpiling one of the biggest arms seizures in Canadian history, as well as a string of drug, explosives and firearms charges.

The weapons cache that was seized by the Sûreté du Québec following October 2012 raids in project Loquace netted authorities 1,475 sticks of dynamite, two pounds of C-4 explosives, remote controls for the explosives, detonators and hundreds of firearms and prohibited gun parts.

Maloney said he has enjoyed collecting guns because he enjoyed the engineering, not violence.

“I started collecting guns legally and illegally,” he said, noting he had close to 90 legal guns, including AR-15 rifles and handguns.

He said he wasn’t sure how many illegal guns he owned, but said the number was less than 90.

“I enjoyed the engineering aspect of firearms,” he said. “It’s kind of fascinating to me why they work.”

He said this was a hobby, not a business.

“Generally speaking, I didn’t sell firearms.”

“It wasn’t like a moral thing. I wouldn’t sell them. I was kind of keeping them to myself.

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“I didn’t need 90. I didn’t need five. I didn’t need any.”

Members and associates of the Wolfpack Alliance were convicted of the 2012 murder of Johnny Raposo at the Sicilian Sidewalk Café on College Street.

Maloney was not charged in that crime, but his Wolfpack associate Rabih (Robby) Alkhalil is serving a life sentence for setting up the murder, along with hit man Dean Michael Wiwchar of Stouffville, Nicolas (Nick) Nero of Niagara-on-the-Lake and Yorkville, and Martino Caputo, a former Forest Hill restaurant owner.

Maloney dismissed questions that he was a leader or active member of the West End Irish mob from Montreal.

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“I just happen to be Irish,” he said.

Project Loquace targeted an international drug ring that imported up to 75 kilograms of cocaine per week into Canada through links to Mexican and South American cartels.

Maloney earlier served two years in prison for his role in the prolonged beating of a Montreal police officer who was on holidays in Playa del Carmen, Mexico in January 2011.

That beating took place after the officer was caught photographing Quebec Hells Angels associating with Quebec police officers at a Mexican resort in Playa del Carmen.

The officer required several facial surgeries after the beating.

Maloney said that others in a bar in Playa del Carmen, Mexico started to beat the Montreal police officer and that he cautioned them that it was best not to harm a police officer.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” Maloney said. “I saw a guy with a black eye.”

Quebec court earlier heard one of Maloney’s key Wolfpack associates was Mihale Leventis, whose brother Anastasios (Tassos) Leventis, 39, of Montreal was shot to death in broad daylight in downtown Toronto near George Brown College’s St. James campus on January 30, 2017. His murder remains unsolved.