A Kamloops man is facing a criminal charge in the Northwest Territories after allegedly beating up a cab driver.
Yellowknife RCMP said Friday they had charged 37-year-old Daniel Mattie with aggravated assault.
According to Mounties, the assault took place on Oct. 12. Investigators believe a cab driver was assaulted while dropping off a fare in the southwest part of Yellowknife.
The cab driver was taken to hospital. Mattie was arrested a short time later.
Mattie is slated to appear in territorial court in Yellowknife on Nov. 15.
A specially trained Mountie who stopped a rented truck on Highway 5 North and found $60,000 worth of cocaine was acting on “a hunch” rather than for legitimate reasons, a provincial court judge has ruled.
A a result, the cocaine cannot be entered as evidence and the Crown was forced to drop a charge of possession for the purpose of trafficking against Zobair Afzali.
Const. Eric Thompson pulled over Afzali’s rented truck in Barriere in November 2014, testifying he was suspicious because it was travelling slightly below the speed limit.
A database search determined the truck was registered to a Vancouver firm and was linked to 24 recent police investigations.
Together with his drug-sniffing dog, Whiskey, Thompson has made 250 seizures from motor vehicles in recent years, including cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl.
He is now co-ordinator for the RCMP’s Operation Pipeline course that helps members detect other criminal activity when pulling over a motorist for a traffic stop.
Thompson also told the court he was concerned the truck may not have been equipped with winter tires.
After he stopped the truck, Thompson testified he was suspicious because Afzali was particularly nervous. As a result, Thompson brought Whiskey out of the car and the dog detected drugs. A subsequent search found 1.2 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a fender well.
But provincial court judge Chris Cleaveley ruled Thompson was using pretexts of motor-vehicle and other issues to pull over Afzali on what is known to be a drug courier route to Northern Alberta.
“In summary, I find that when Const. Thompson stopped and detained Mr. Afzali, he did not have any legitimate road safety or Motor Vehicle Act concerns,” Cleaveley wrote in his judgement.
“Mr. Afzali was stopped and detained by Const. Thompson on account of his hunch of criminal activity relating to the number of police files associated to the vehicle, none of which involved Mr. Afzali.”
Stopping and detaining Afzali based on that hunch was a breach of his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Cleaveley ruled.
Calling the case “unique” and “exceptional,” a three-judge panel in B.C.’s highest court has essentially upheld an illegal sentence imposed by a Kamloops judge on a local drug dealer.
Steven Lloyd Currie pleaded guilty to conspiring to traffic cocaine. In February, he was handed a two-year conditional sentence — house arrest — followed by three years of probation, including 500 hours of community service.
Currie had no prior record. He was arrested when police dismantled a Kamloops dial-a-dope ring, of which Currie was described as the manager.
Currie was one of a handful of men who pleaded guilty to drug charges in relation to the operation a dial-a-dope ring operating in Kamloops. Currie managed the operation for more than six months before he was arrested in October 2012.
Richard Crawford, the man at the helm of the operation, was handed a five-year jail sentence. Jean-Claude Auger, its supplier, was sentenced to four years behind bars.
When B.C. Supreme Court Justice Hope Hyslop sentenced Currie, she erred on two counts — conditional sentence orders must be less than two years in length and the maximum amount of community service hours a judge can dole out to someone on probation is 240.
The Crown appealed, while defence lawyer Jordan Watt described Hyslop’s errors as “slips.”
The Court of Appeal judges found Hyslop’s sentence for Currie to be “demonstrably unfit,” but they crafted similar terms to replace it.
Currie is now required to complete 480 hours of community service and his two-year conditional sentence was reduced to two years less a day to make it legal.
Killing a friend while driving a minivan at twice the posted speed limit while nearly four times over the legal blood-alcohol limit to operate a motor vehicle has cost a Kamloops woman a year-and-a-half behind bars.
Yvonne Wilson pleaded guilty in B.C. Supreme Court on Monday to impaired driving causing death.
Barry Charlie was killed after being ejected from a van Wilson was driving near Pail Lake on June 25, 2014.
Court heard Wilson, 48, and a group of friends spent that day drinking and driving around Kamloops. At some point, they took a trip to Paul Lake.
“Everyone in the vehicle, including Ms. Wilson, had been consuming alcohol during that day,” Crown prosecutor Chris Balison said. “After being up in the Paul Lake area for some time, they decided to head back to Kamloops to purchase more alcohol.”
Balison said Wilson lost control on a set of switchbacks, sending the minivan rolling and ejecting Charlie. The posted speed limit on that portion of highway is 50 km/h. Balison said an RCMP collision reconstructionist determined Wilson’s van was travelling between 104 km/h and 107 km/h.
“She was warned by passengers of the van that she was going too fast,” Balison said, noting Charlie was thrown from the vehicle as it rolled. “He received a significant head wound. He died as a result of being ejected.”
Wilson cried in court as Balison read in the circumstances of the crash. Court heard Wilson’s blood-alcohol level was 0.311.
“Her remorse for the death of her friend has been continuous since the day of the death of her friend,” said defence lawyer Sheldon Tate. “As you can see, it continues.”
Tate said Wilson’s mother was murdered when Wilson was five. A few years later, her father died in a house fire. Wilson became dependant on alcohol as a teenager.
Court heard Wilson later met and married a man from El Salvador. Tate said he was jailed in his homeland in the late-2000s amid political unrest and died behind bars earlier this year.
“It’s a wonder that this lady has been able to make it as far as she has,” Tate said. “She has an inner strength that is palpable, that people are aware of. She is as remorseful as a person can be and she is highly motivated to deal with her issues.”
Wilson apologized in court.
“This is a really tragic thing that happened,” she said. “I want to say sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I’m sorry for that.”
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Hope Hyslop handed Wilson a jail sentence of 18 months.
“I think in some ways that Ms. Wilson has, to this point in her life, lived in a state of jail,” Hyslop said.
“Not every individual has as many things happen to them. It’s very clear that Ms. Wilson is remorseful. She has been remorseful since the day it happened, and that remorse has continued.”
An Ashcroft man who beat his uncle to death in the front yard of his home will receive a sentence of life imprisonment.
The only issue left for Shane Gyoba is to wait for a B.C. Supreme Court judge to decide how long he will spend behind bars for second-degree murder before becoming eligible for parole.
The minimum sentence is life in prison with no chance at parole for 10 years, with the maximum sentence 25 years in prison before being able to seek parole.
In June, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Dev Dley found that the Crown had proven Gyoba killed his uncle two years ago.
Ed Gyoba was beaten to death in the front yard of his Ashcroft home on June 2, 2014.
During Shane Gyoba’s trial, he made frequent outbursts and threatened the judge and lawyers.
Because of that, and other troubling statements Gyoba made to police investigating the incident, Gyoba was sent for a psychiatric assessment to determine whether he might be found not criminally responsible by way of a mental disorder.
In court yesterday, Crown prosecutor Neil Flanagan said the psychiatric report does not support such a finding.
“Mr. Gyoba will be sentenced,” Flanagan said.
“He has already been found guilty of second-degree murder. In view of the report, the Crown will not be making any further arguments.”
Gyoba is expected to return to court for sentencing on Nov. 28.
He was arrested a short time after his uncle was killed and has been in custody since.
A father who beat a Chihuahua to death after it bit his daughter in the face during Thanksgiving dinner does not deserve a jail sentence, a provincial court judge ruled Tuesday.
Christopher Mathes, 41, pleaded guilty in August to causing pain or suffering to an animal, an offence under the Criminal Code of Canada.
Mathes, a millwright with two children, testified earlier during a sentencing hearing that he killed the dog, a Chihuahua named Jersey, out of self-defence and fear after it had earlier bit his six-year-old daughter in the face, causing a cut under her eye.
It was the latest in a string of attacks by the dog on other dogs and people.
Judge Roy Dickey gave Mathes a conditional discharge of 12 months. He is banned from being in the presence of dogs for one year.
“This should not be seen as condoning what occurred,” Dickey warned, ruling the beating was an exceptional circumstance that does not require a jail sentence.
Dickey said Mathes overreacted after seeing his daughter bit in the face.
“I accept this type of offence is exceptional and not within in the normal range,” the judge said, noting Mathes was immediately remorseful after the dog’s death.
Crown prosecutor Alex Janse argued unsuccessfully for a six-month conditional sentence, including a three-month house curfew, and a 10-year ban on owning a dog.
Court heard earlier the dog — obtained from a rescue organization and brought to Kamloops from California a month earlier — was inside the family home on Oct. 11, 2015, during a Thanksgiving meal. Mathes and his wife had invited friends over.
The dog earlier bit their friends’ dog in the face a number of times. It had bitten five people in the two weeks preceding the dinner gathering.
After the dog bit the couple’s daughter, it was moved outside. That’s when Mathes told the judge he was going to put it in the garage. It became aggressive when he attempted to move it.
Mathes struck the 10-pound dog with a fence post, causing a serious injury. He then beat it repeatedly to put it out of misery.
A B.C. Supreme Court justice must find a three-year sentence a Merritt man is facing for selling a gun he found “grossly disproportionate” to the crime in order for it be struck down under the Charter, a Crown lawyer argued Tuesday.
Rodney Boesel pleaded guilty to trafficking a weapon in connection to the incident that occurred on May 1, 2014, when he found a gun and immediately sold it for $80.
The minimum sentence under the Criminal Code of Canada is three years in jail.
Boesel was doing renovations at the Merritt apartment building in which he lived when he came across a hidden Browning shotgun wrapped in plastic in a weedy lumber pile beside a shed.
He immediately called his drug dealer, who he had only recently met, and offered to sell the gun.
RCMP had arrested the drug dealer the day before and an officer answered his cellphone. Boesel arranged to sell the gun for $80 and about $20 worth of crack cocaine.
An undercover Mountie made the deal the same morning and police immediately arrested Boesel.
Defence lawyer Genevieve Eliany is asking B.C. Supreme Court Justice Hope Hyslop to declare the minimum sentence contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and not law in B.C.
Crown prosecutor Lesley Ruzicka told Hyslop she must find the three-year prison term “grossly inappropriate” — rather than simply not fit or excessive — in order for it to be ruled cruel and unusual punishment and, therefore, a breach of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Under laws brought in by the previous Conservative government in 2008, convictions in weapons-trafficking offences carry a minimum three-year jail sentence.
That law has been found to be unconstitutional in other provinces, including Ontario, but remains valid in B.C.
The hearing is expected to continue Wednesday in Kamloops Law Courts.
Boesel is a drug addict on a methadone program who has a criminal record for a string of break-and-enter thefts in 2008. He has no record for violence.
After the sale, Boesel told police: “It must seem stupid, but I really didn’t think about it.’”
A father visiting Kamloops with his son is suing the city, claiming the infant suffered injuries after he fell from playground equipment at Riverside Park.
Brock Lawlor, on behalf of his son Blake, filed a lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court alleging a piece of equipment called the Explorer Dome is “a hazard and would be dangerous to visitors of the park.”
The playground equipment features a net system suspended by arching metal tubes.
The lawsuit claims Blake suffered an arm fracture when he fell of the playground on April 16 this year.
That fall and broken arm resulted in anxiety and sleep disturbance, the lawsuit claims.
The Quesnel family is seeking damages and future health-care costs.
The statement of claim blames the city for failing to warn of the alleged danger of the equipment with a sign and for not installing padding beneath the equipment.
It alleges the city breached the Occupiers Liability Act.
The Crown will seek a long-term offender designation for a man convicted of arson and manslaughter. Prosecutor Neil Flanagan filed materials Thursday in B.C. Supreme Court to schedule a sentencing hearing for David Gordon. Flanagan said the Crown will not seek to label Gordon a dangerous offender, as was earlier considered, but will opt instead for the lesser designation.
In November of last year, a jury found Gordon guilty on each of the three counts with which he was charged — manslaughter and two charges of causing damage by fire or explosion. Cheryl William died following a house fire on St. Paul Street on April 25, 2013. She was asleep in the home when the fire broke out and efforts to wake her were unsuccessful.
Under long-term offender legislation, the Crown must ask for a prison sentence of at least two years, followed by a maximum 10-year supervision in the community. It is typically used for sex offenders.
During the trial, the jury heard evidence Gordon lit a box of clothes on fire after having an argument with his girlfriend. He then fled the house and his roommate was unable to douse the flames or wake up William. Gordon had only been living in the house for two days prior to setting the fire.
Two Kamloops lawyers have won a case in the Supreme Court of Canada that will require judges to accept joint submissions from defence and prosecutors when a guilty plea is entered.
Micah Rankin and Jeremy Jensen represented Matthew Anthony-Cook, who pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge stemming from a fight in February 2013.
Michael Gregory, a volunteer at the Kettle Society drop-in centre in Vancouver, died after being punched twice in the head. The second blow knocked him out and he fell back on the pavement, fracturing his skull.
Anthony-Cook’s lawyer struck a deal with the Crown for a guilty plea to manslaughter and avoid a trial. The joint submission to B.C. Supreme Court by Crown and defence called for an 18-month jail sentence. Anthony-Cook had spent 11 months in custody awaiting trial.
The sentencing judge, however, rejected that submission. Instead, he increased the penalty to two years less a day and added a three-year probation term.
The higher sentence was appealed to the B.C. Court of Appeal, but B.C.’s highest court sided with the sentencing judge’s tougher sentence.
The Supreme Court of Canada reversed that decision, saying only in the rarest circumstances can judges alter a deal crafted by defence and Crown.
“Crown and defence counsel are well placed to arrive at a joint submission that addresses the interests of both the public and the accused,” the court wrote in its judgement. “Trial judges should not reject a joint submission lightly.”
The country’s highest court said judges should reject or alter a joint submission only when the proposed sentence “would be viewed by reasonable and informed persons as a breakdown in the proper functioning of the justice system.”
In an interview, Rankin said plea bargains are essential to the functioning of the criminal-justice system because they drastically reduce the amount of court time required to deal with accused persons. Those accused who plead guilty, and in return are told by their lawyer as well as the Crown what their sentence should be would be, are less likely to enter deals if judges could easily reject them.
“I think what the Supreme Court of Canada is saying is unless it’s way out of the ballpark, you shouldn’t intervene,” said Rankin, who is also a professor of law at Thompson Rivers University.
“Sometimes the judge will simply supply additional conditions. The court says it’s as-is.”
Anthony-Cook has already served his sentence, so the victory is one of principle and guidance for judges.
Rankin said it’s rare that judges will not accept a joint submission from defence and Crown.
The Supreme Court also said judges who do not accept a joint submission based on a finding it is not in the public interest must also offer the accused person a chance to withdraw his or her plea.
“Traditionally in Canada, it’s virtually impossible to withdraw a guilty plea,” Rankin said, noting the decision will place Canada more in line with practice in the United States, he added.
An elderly Kamloops-area woman who killed a recent immigrant to Canada in a collision on the Yellowhead Highway last year has been fined $1,000 and banned from driving for a year.
Joyce Doll, 72, pleaded guilty in Kamloops provincial court on Monday to driving without due care and attention stemming from a July 2015 crash that claimed the life of 53-year-old Swarn Kaur Shergill.
Court heard the two-vehicle collision took place on Highway 5 in Vinsulla, 30 kilometres north of Kamloops, on July 28, 2015.
Doll was driving a pickup truck northbound waiting to make a left turn on her way home. Shergill and three relatives were southbound in a Volkswagen Jetta.
“What occurred was a bus went past in the lane through which Ms. Doll needed to turn,” Crown prosecutor Sarah Firestone said. “The bus went past and Ms. Doll turned, failing to see the Jetta coming behind the bus.”
The crash sent both vehicles spinning out of control, Firestone said. Shergill was pronounced dead at the scene and two of her relatives — including her husband, Swarn Singh Shergill — suffered significant injuries.
“The bus appeared to Ms. Doll to be the last vehicle in a line of traffic, but it was not,” Firestone said. “It was the Jetta.”
Reading a victim-impact statement in court, Amandeep Chahal said her mother, Shergill, moved to Canada from India in 2014, the year before the crash.
“There is nothing left in our lives now,” she said. “We feel like we have lost everything. It is so hard to live without her.”
Chahal said her father’s injuries have left him permanently disabled and he will never work. That has forced other family members to pick up the slack and begin working additional jobs.
“We came to what we thought was a safer place and now she’s gone,” Swarn Singh Shergill said in a written statement read to court. “She was the centre of our family. She took care of all of us.”
Defence lawyer Eric Rines called the fatal collision “a tragic accident.” He said Doll has been driving for 56 years and had never been involved in a crash before last summer’s fatal incident.
“She said she doesn’t know how she didn’t see the vehicle,” he said. “She considers herself a very conscientious driver.”
Doll apologized in court.
“It was a really bad accident — bad judgement on my part,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”
A Kamloops man who was handed a nine-month jail sentence and a five-year driving probation in 2011 after killing a pedestrian in a downtown crosswalk while dangerously driving his motorcycle is facing six months behind bars and a decade-long ban after being caught multiple times driving while prohibited.
Jack Hobal pleaded guilty in Kamloops provincial court on Monday to one count each of driving while prohibited and refusing to provide a breath sample.
The 39-year-old was busted after police saw him driving an SUV erratically in downtown Kamloops on Oct. 9.
On July 5, 2009, witnesses reported seeing Hobal popping wheelies and weaving in and out of traffic on his motorcycle before striking a pedestrian at First Avenue and St. Paul Street. Gary Pengelly, 55, died in hospital a short time later.
When Hobal was sentenced, more than two years later, court heard he had a blood-alcohol level as high as 0.089 at the time of the collision.
In the incident earlier this month, police reported smelling liquor on Hobal’s breath. He refused to provide a breath sample and was charged.
It’s not the first time Hobal has been found to have been violating the five-year driving ban he was placed on after killing Pengelly. Last year, he was sentenced to 30 days in jail after being convicted on charges of driving while disqualified and failing to stop.
In May of this year, he was handed a 90-day immediate roadside prohibition after being caught driving. He’s also facing an outstanding charge of driving while disqualified, to which he has pleaded guilty but not been sentenced.
Crown prosecutor Sarah Firestone is seeking a six-month jail term and a 10-year driving ban.
Hobal is slated to return to court for sentencing on Nov. 14.
Family members of a Shuswap man shot to death more than five years ago wept in a packed courtroom Monday as a 29-year-old from Blind Bay pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
Jordan Larry Barnes made the guilty plea in Courtroom 5B of the Kamloops Law Courts after the hearing was delayed so court staff could bring in temporary seating to accommodate spectators.
Details of the shooting, which were read in court, cannot be published pending a jury trial for Jeremy Wayne Davis, expected to get underway in late November.
Nicholas Larson, 24, was shot dead on June 1, 2011.
At the time, police called the attack “targeted” and said it stemmed from a dispute between two groups of men. Investigators said Larson was shot while travelling as a passenger in a friend’s vehicle.
In July 2014, police announced the arrests of Barnes and Davis.
Davis, 26, is expected to appear in B.C. Supreme Court next week to confirm his trial dates.
A pair of men charged with aggravated assault following an attack that left an RCMP constable lying unconscious on a road east of Kamloops have pleaded guilty to reduced charges.
Jerry Lee Lamar and Leon Francis Leclerc each pleaded guilty in B.C. Supreme Court on Monday to one count of assaulting a peace officer.
The pair had been charged with one count each of aggravated assault with an attempt to wound, maim or disfigure following an incident in Pritchard. Lamar had been facing an addition charge of failing to provide a breath sample.
Court has heard Lamar and Leclerc were stopped by a one-man police roadblock on July 5, 2014. According to dash-camera footage played in court at a pre-trial hearing, RCMP Const. Paul Koester asked Lamar to provide a sample of his breath.
Lamar refused and an altercation ensued, culminating in a beating of Koester that appeared, according to the footage, to leave him unconscious.
Lawyers had argued at earlier hearings that Lamar and Leclerc were acting in self-defence, fearful that Koester was reaching for his sidearm.
Koester is the Mountie who shot and killed 22-year-old Ian Bush during a 2005 altercation at the RCMP detachment in Houston, a small town near Smithers.
Koester was cleared in the subsequent investigation and no charges were laid.
Lamar and Leclerc had been expected to stand trial before a B.C. Supreme Court jury starting this week. They will return to court on Monday to set a date for sentencing.
KTW is applying through court for a digital copy of Koester’s dash-cam footage to be published online.
Extra sheriffs were in a Kamloops courtroom on Tuesday as a sentencing hearing began for a North Thompson man who killed his wife in 2014.
Scott pleaded guilty to second-degree during a brief hearing in a Vancouver courtroom in June. The plea carries with it an automatic life sentence, but it is up to a judge to decide how long he will spend behind bars before becoming eligible for parole — from 10 to 25 years.
The Crown is expected to be seeking a period of 14 to 15 years of parole ineligibility for Iain Drummond Scott.
Angila Wilson, Scott’s estranged wife, was stabbed to death on April 20, 2014 in her Clearwater home.
Angila Wilson
Wilson and Scott had three children together and lived in the community 90 minutes north of Kamloops.
Eleven days before Wilson’s murder, the estranged couple had an argument about Scott’s behaviour, which culminated in him throwing a 20-pound bag of rock salt through the windshield of her car.
He then attempted suicide and was hospitalized for a brief period in Kamloops, court has heard. Wilson was placed in a temporary safe house.
When Wilson got in her car to drive to Kamloops to apply for a protection order against Scott, she found her vehicle had been disabled. Court has heard Scott had been researching ways to disable vehicles.
A protection order was granted on April 15, 2014 — just five days before Wilson was killed — but Scott was never served.
On the night of the murder, court has heard, Scott’s sister phoned Wilson to talk about Scott’s well-being. Scott arrived at Wilson’s house during the phone conversation and the line went dead.
Police were called the next day, after Wilson failed to open her door when an acquaintance showed up to give her a ride. Officers found Wilson’s body beneath a blanket in her daughter’s bedroom. She had been stabbed 11 times, including twice in the face and twice in the back.
Police found the couple’s children in Scott’s care. He was arrested after an hours-long standoff and the children were not harmed.
During his guilty plea before Cullen in June, Scott said: “This is a really unfortunate situation, my 794th consecutive day of crying. Although I don’t have any recollection of the actual event, I’m confident that the evidence put forward during the preliminary hearing means that it was definitely me that committed the crime. Just because you can’t remember something doesn’t make it excusable. Still I can’t imagine why I would do something like that.
Ian Donaldson, Scott’s lawyer, said at that June court appearance that the children were never harmed and were properly cared for during the incident. He told Cullen that, by the time of the slaying, Scott had had a pattern of injuries, including head injuries, and was “very substantially” impaired at the time of the murder.
More than a dozen friends and family of the couple filled a small courtroom at the Kamloops Law Courts on Tuesday.
The sentencing hearing is expected to wrap up on Wednesday, with a decision from B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen expected as early as Thursday.
Angila Wilson’s six-year-old son got out of bed and walked to the door of his room. He awoke to a noise — “bam bam,” as he described it — and went to investigate.
He opened the door and peeked outside.
“He saw dad drop mom on ‘the soft part,’ the carpet,” reads a police report read into B.C. Supreme Court on Wednesday. “He said, ‘Dad dropped mom on her head.’”
The boy told his father, Iain Drummond Scott, that he had wet his bed.
“His father tells him to go get changed,” Crown prosecutor Adrienne Murphy said. “He said, ‘Mommy is sleeping.’”
Mommy was dead.
Scott had stabbed Wilson, his estranged wife, 11 times — including twice each in the face and back — leaving a bloody mess in the 33-year-old Clearwater woman’s home.
Scott took Wilson’s body and placed it on the floor in the bedroom she shared with her seven-year-old daughter, who was, by then, lying awake in bed.
Murphy said the girl looked down and was puzzled.
“She did not know why her mom was sleeping on the floor because she usually sleeps with her in bed,” Murphy said. “She heard her dad talking to her mom, but was unable to make out the words. She heard her dad laughing.”
Court heard Scott then rounded up his children and said they were leaving. As he ushered them out of the house, the daughter noticed the mess left behind by her mother’s violent murder.
“She saw red paint all over the walls, but did not see any paint can,” Murphy said, noting Scott told his three kids it was paint.
“The conversations Mr. Scott is having with his children, he’s cogent. When he’s asked about the blood, he says, ‘Oh, it’s paint.’”
***
Wilson was killed on April 20, 2014, at some point between 9:17 p.m. and 9:29 p.m., court heard. At 9:17 p.m., she was on the phone with Scott’s sister, talking about his erratic behaviour, when the phone went dead.
Murphy read a quote Scott’s sister said was the last thing she heard Wilson say during their phone conversation: “What are you doing here? I’m going to call the police.”
At 9:29 p.m., Scott was captured on surveillance video at a Clearwater liquor store buying a bottle of Fireball whisky — the same item he purchased at the same store four hours earlier. The clerk at the store said Scott did not appear to be intoxicated, Murphy said, and noticed blood on his arms and fingers.
“Why would Mr. Scott go to the liquor store? He’d been in the liquor store earlier,” Murphy said. “There was really no reason for Mr. Scott to attend to buy Fireball whisky. Crown theorizes this is a clumsy attempt by him to establish some kind of alibi.”
***
Scott’s 10-year relationship with Wilson was a turbulent one, especially in the weeks and months leading up to her murder.
“It was a relationship, a life, built on a house of cards — some good times, some bad times, some long, long tales and some Fireball whisky,” Murphy said.
Fireball was Scott’s drink of choice, Murphy said, and his drinking drove many of the problems he and Wilson had.
There had been breakups and reconciliations but, Murphy said, Wilson meant it when the couple split in early 2014. On March 7, 2014, Wilson signed a lease on the Clearwater home that would six weeks later be behind police tape. Scott did not take the breakup well.
“He was not accepting that his wife has moved on,” Murphy said, noting Scott’s text messages to Wilson painted such a picture.
Murphy read some of the messages in court. Wilson’s replies were cordial but firm.
“I do not want to hear that you love me anymore,” she texted him on March 29. “I want you to respect my wishes because I don’t feel the same way about you.”
Around the same time, Wilson talked to friends about her feeling that Scott was “keeping track” of her, court heard. He was. Murphy said Scott had a friend doing drive-by checks of Wilson’s new home, and asked others to do the same in vehicles she would not recognize.
***
In early April, Scott began to spiral out of control. After using cocaine with friends at a party on April 5, Murphy said, he had hallucinations about a police tactical team surrounding his house and chasing him through the woods.
Three days later, he visited the Clearwater RCMP detachment to ask officers if the event had actually happened.
“The police, the following day, go see Angila Wilson,” Murphy said. “It arises from this strange report.”
On April 10, court heard, Wilson confronted Scott at his home after a friend told her she’d seen him speeding through a stop sign while on his way to pick up their children from school. Scott responded by throwing a 40-pound bag of rock salt through the windshield of her car, Murphy said. Wilson left with the kids and Scott cut his wrists.
Police found him drunk and with superficial wounds to his forearms in the basement of his home.
“He was cycling through his emotions and was very intoxicated,” reads a police report filed after the incident.
Scott was taken to Royal Inland Hospital and held overnight. He was released on April 11 after being interviewed by a psychiatrist. Following his release, Scott walked around downtown Kamloops, stopping at a store to buy Wilson a hat to give to her as a gift.
Murphy said Scott never intended to kill himself but feigned the attempt in an effort to keep police from investigating the rock-salt incident. The same day Scott was released, the Ministry of Children and Family Development became involved, getting to work setting up a “safety plan” for Wilson.
***
Wilson spent April 11 in an improvised “safe house” — a room at a Clearwater hotel. Police hid her vehicle so Scott could not find her.
Wilson did not like being in hiding, Murphy said, and left with her kids the following day, running into Scott outside a Clearwater grocery store.
“He comes up to the vehicle where the children are and she says, ‘You shouldn’t be here,’” Murphy said. “Then he says to Angila, ‘Hey, look, I got you a hat,’ and he gives her that present.”
Five days later, Wilson was in a Kamloops courtroom getting a protection order against Scott.
While she was in court, Scott was a few doors down at Royal Inland Hospital recovering from surgery on a broken arm he suffered in a bike crash. In hospital, Scott was held until he could be checked over by the same psychiatrist who released him the previous week. He was released again on April 17.
Murphy said Scott talked to the doctor about his hopes of reconciling with Wilson. In his notes, the psychiatrist said Scott did not present signs of being “psychotic, suicidal or homicidal.”
***
April 18, 2014, was Good Friday. Wilson spent the day doing church activities and taking part in an Easter egg hunt.
The protection order, granted on April 16, had not yet been served on Scott. Murphy said staff at the Kamloops courthouse had not been able to fax a copy to Clearwater RCMP or get an original to Wilson.
“The circumstances may have been different had that order been served, but it had not,” she said.
Two days later, Wilson took her kids to Easter dinner at a friend’s house. While she was celebrating the holiday, Scott was sitting at a picnic table outside her empty house sending her text messages.
“I love you more than all the universe,” read one.
Scott left before Wilson and their children returned home. But, he returned at 9:17 p.m., interrupting Wilson’s phone call with his sister.
“It appears Ms. Wilson died not very shortly, if not immediately, after Mr. Scott’s arrival at the residence,” Murphy said.
***
Wilson’s friend phoned police the following day after noticing blood on the door of her home. Police found her body inside and zeroed in on Scott, surrounding his house with a tactical team — not unlike the hallucination that first landed him in Royal Inland Hospital.
The children were rescued by police. Court has heard no evidence that they were physically harmed.
After an hours-long standoff, during which time Scott would not answer the phone for a police negotiator, officers entered Scott’s home and found him lying in bed. He was arrested without incident and has been in custody since.
“The house of cards had, in essence, come to an end,” Murphy said.
***
Scott pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, meaning he will automatically receive a life sentence. The hearing taking place this week is to determine how long he will spend behind bars before becoming eligible for parole.
Murphy is seeking a period of 14 to 15 years.
“Ms. Wilson was killed in her own home while her children were sleeping in their beds — and, if not sleeping, awake and observing what was happening,” she said, noting Scott left his children alone after the slaying to go to the liquor store.
“There is a form of abuse that occurred when the father left his kids at that crime scene.”
Defence lawyer Ian Donaldson has pitched a 10- to 12-year period of parole ineligibility.
A decision on sentencing from B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen is expected on Thursday.
*****
Today, Wilson and Scott’s children are in the care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
They are undergoing counselling that, to this point, had been stunted because of the unknown outcome of the case against their father.
With the guilty plea, Murphy said, the children will now be able to receive full counselling. Until now, ministry counsellors had to be careful about how they discussed their family situation so as not to influence their potential testimony at their father’s trial.
A court battle is also underway between Wilson’s family and Scott’s sister. Both are seeking custody of the children.
A Kamloops man accused of beating a teen into a coma following a high-school graduation party earlier this year has elected to be tried by a judge and jury.
A lawyer made the election of Kristopher Teichrieb’s behalf during a brief hearing in Kamloops provincial court on Thursday.
Teichrieb is facing charges of attempted murder and assault with a weapon stemming from the June 19 beating of Jessie Simpson.
Simpson, who turned 19 in July, has been on life support since the incident.
His friends and family have said he was celebrating high school graduation on the evening of June 18 and may have been trying to find a group of friends when he was attacked in the early-morning hours of the following day.
The assault took place near Teichrieb’s Brocklehurst home. It’s not clear whether Simpson was on Teichrieb’s property prior to the incident, but police initially said a Clifford Avenue homeowner had confronted someone in his driveway.
The alleged altercation, however, is believed to have taken place nearby in the area of Clifford Avenue and Holt Street.
Teichrieb, who does not have a criminal record, was denied bail following a hearing in July. He has been in custody since his arrest shortly after the June 19 incident.
Lawyers are slated to meet on Monday to set a date for a preliminary inquiry ahead of Teichrieb’s trial in B.C. Supreme Court.
Calling the attack “brutal” and “determined,” a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ordered a Clearwater man who admitted to stabbing his wife to death to spend 13 years behind bars before becoming eligible for parole.
Iain Drummond Scott sat silently in the prisoner’s box on Thursday morning as B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen delivered his sentence.
Scott, 44, pleaded guilty earlier this year to second-degree murder.
He killed his estranged wife, 33-year-old Angila Wilson, on April 20, 2014, as two of the couple’s three children looked on.
“I think we’ve been, as a family, struggling with Angila’s loss,” Dey Stewart, Wilson’s aunt, said after the decision. “As horrible as it is to hear in court how she suffered, it is curiously settling.”
Scott and Wilson had been separated for more than a month when she was killed. The murder took place in Wilson’s Clearwater home on Easter Sunday, a short time after she put her three children to bed.
Court heard Scott entered the home as Wilson was on the phone with Scott’s sister. The phone line went dead.
Crown prosecutor Adrienne Murphy said the couple’s seven-year-old son told police he peeked out of his bedroom and saw the attack taking place. The couple’s seven-year-old daughter said she saw what she thought was red paint on the walls of Wilson’s home, but no paint can.
Murphy, who had been seeking a parole-ineligibility period of 14 to 15 years, said she wasn’t disappointed with Scott’s sentence.
“I think it’s a reasonable parole-ineligibility period,” she said. “The judge touched on the pertinent parts and I consider it reasonable.”
Cullen cited an “unexplained element of strangeness” in the attack.
Court heard Scott had been drinking and using drugs in the days leading up to the murder and he reported hallucinations to police. He was also hospitalized on two occasions in the weeks before the slaying, but was released by a psychiatrist both times.
“There are certain aspects that we can only speculate about what occurred,” Murphy said. “We do know that Mr. Scott says he doesn’t remember what occurred.”
For his part, Scott apologized in court.
“No words can describe how sorry I am,” he said. “I can’t understand how I could even come to do something so horrific. It absolutely sickens me. It’s so difficult to comprehend or imagine being capable of such a thing. I never would have imagined.”
Stewart said the family is looking to move forward and is expecting a family court decision on the custody of Wilson and Scott’s children in the coming months.
In the meantime, the kids are staying with Wilson’s family in Hope.
“They’re doing remarkable well,” Stewart said. “They’re in school, in sports. Our main concern was that there would be enough time for the children to grow up without there being any chance of parole. I think that was met.”
A Thompson Rivers University student who registered for classes in the fall is suing the university in provincial court, claiming instructors and materials were not up to standard.
Justin Gross of Lethbridge filed a notice of claim in small claims court.
He is seeking about $2,500 to compensate him for tuition and other fees.
Gross claims he registered for classes in fall this year “and confirmed that appropriate faculty would be teaching the classes.”
The lawsuit alleges students were instead given a junior instructor for required labs.
Gross said the university assured him the same quality of instruction would be offered, but claims it failed to deliver.
“After week four, I had experienced consistent contradictory and wrong information to questions posed during labs, which impacted my lab and class marks,” Gross said in his claim.
The university declined to comment on Gross’s lawsuit directly, but forwarded policy showing avenues for student appeals.
Students can withdraw from classes in the first two weeks and receive full refund of tuition.
After that date, based on “extenuating circumstances,” students can withdraw based on medical or other circumstances and receive tuition refunds, but they require documentation.
TRU provided statistics showing undergraduate students withdraw from, or fail to complete, individual classes about six per cent of the time.
Following his complaints, Gross claims TRU representatives stated, “I was potentially experiencing mental health issues,” alleging he was banned from attending classes.
The university has not yet filed a statement of defence.
None of the allegations have been heard or proven in court.
The charge against a Fraser Valley man accused of killing a woman in a Kamloops hotel in August has been upgraded.
David Albert Miller is facing one count of first-degree murder in connection to the death of Debra Novacluse. Miller, 54, had initially been charged with second-degree murder.
The body of Novacluse, 52, was discovered at the Super 8 motel on Hugh Allan Drive in Aberdeen on Aug. 27. Miller was tracked by police and eventually arrested in Ontario in September.
Both Miller and Novacluse were visiting Kamloops from Abbotsford, police have said. At the time of Miller’s arrest, police called the alleged slaying “a targeted attack.”
Miller, who has been in custody since his arrest, is expected to appear in Kamloops provincial court for a bail hearing on Thursday, Nov. 3.
