www.pgcitizen.ca
THE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2015
PRINCE
GEORGE
CITIZEN
Legebokoff trial, Matters inquest part of busy year at courthouse
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
The trial for one of Canada’s youngest serial killers had its share of the spotlight but Cody Allan Legebokoff was not the sole centre of attention at the Prince George courthouse in
2014.
Although not specifically a trial, at times the coroner’s inquest into the death of Greg Matters took on the tone of one as Cameron Ward, the lawyer representing the family of the Canadian military veteran, grilled police and investigators about what exactly happened on that night in Sept. 2012.
Like Legebokoff, the proceeding, which ended in January, drew a bigger than average number of court watchers to the gallery in courtroom 104.
While the jury issued recommendations, including one that emergency response team members wear video cameras to record such incidents, the family has since filed a lawsuit against the RCMP and the officer who shot Matters during a confrontation on his Pinev-iew property.
The year began with B.C. Supreme Court Justice Selwyn Romilly sentencing a former Prince George man to 16 years in prison for 11 sex-related crimes against two of his stepdaughters, calling him “evil” and a “monster” in the process.
The man, 55 at the time of sentence cannot be named under a court-ordered publication ban against information identifying the victims. He often invoked religion to get his way with the two girls, the court heard during a seven-week trial.
“It is said that the devil can cite scripture for his own use,” Romilly said.
“That is certainly the case here. With a warped and vivid imagination and using passages from the Bible to justify his actions, [the man], in a most vile manner, sexually abused two of his stepchildren on a daily basis for over a decade.”
And from what can only be described as
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
Tracey Matters speaks on the steps of the Prince George Law Courts in January as the coroner's inquest into the death of her brother Greg Matters resumed in Prince George.
coming from the dumb criminal file, Jamie Hal Hammerstrom, 36, was sentenced in June to a further 18 months in jail for attempting to sell stolen firearms through accomplices while he was in custody at the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre.
The plan backfired in more ways than one because Hammerstrom was eventually acquitted on the charges that first put him in custody, only to find himself behind bars facing the new charges.
Over the course of a five-week trial, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Brenda Brown heard 14 recordings of telephone calls Hammerstrom made from jail and concluded references made by those involved to “wooden things,” “shorts,” “long things,” “long pants” and “toys” were code words for the guns.
At least four others were much luckier. In February, the case against case Michael Andrew Joseph Fitzgerald, 34, Francois Christiaan Meerholz, 26, Dillan Meerholz, 24, and Craig Anthony Niedermayer, 37, was thrown out after the key witness refused to testify.
They had been accused of kidnapping and torturing the man believed responsible for the loss of about seven kilograms of marijuana from a Salmon Valley grow operation. He escaped his tormenters by jumping out of the second storey window of a house and, bloodied and frightened, bursting into the nearby Ferndale Community Hall.
Ironically, in November, the man, who cannot be named under a court ordered publication ban, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to counts of attempting to obstruct justice and disobeying a court order.
In July, Frank William Edward Marion, 51, was sentenced to a further six years and three months in prison for setting a fire in January 2012 that led to the death of his landlord and a noted member of the city’s Sikh community, Jagdev Singh Jawanda, 85.
A retired math teacher, Jawanda was described as a deeply religious man who dedicated his life to education and helping others, two of his sons and a daughter said in victim impact statements supplied to the court.
Looking ahead, the cases against two men who were Prince George Fire Rescue firefighters at the time of their arrest remain before the courts. In December, a trial for Jeremy Matthew Kostyshyn was postponed for a second time when, in response to the upgrading of two charges, he re-elected to have the matter held in B.C. Supreme Court before judge alone.
Kostyshyn faces five counts of trafficking involving: an excavator; a boat and trailer; a loader and two flat deck trailers. He also faces four counts of possession of stolen property over $5,000 involving a boat and trailer, an all-terrain vehicle, an unspecified item and two snowmobiles.
— see INQUEST, page 3
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Class clash
Battle between teachers, gov't dominated schools in 2014
Samantha WRIGHT ALLEN
Citizen staff sallen@pgcitizen.ca
Education in 2014 was defined by a protracted, months-long contract dispute between public teachers and the province.
In the wake of the longest prov-incewide strike in B.C. history, the ripple effect of that rancour is still moving through School District 57 months after the September bargained end brought students back to school.
“It was pretty difficult coming back,” said Katherine Trepanier, a teacher at College Heights elementary who also sits on the Prince George and District Teachers Association executive.
“Coming back into the schools, really nothing has changed in the system. There’s no more supports for students that need it,” said Trepanier, adding she and her colleagues were demoralized and felt devalued as employees.
Coming back into the schools, really nothing has changed in the system.
— Katherine Trepanier
“The funding in the schools still doesn’t meet the needs of the kids. That’s probably the toughest part - teachers lost a lot financially, you know, which we probably would have felt better about if we’d felt like we’d made a lot of gains as far as the needs of the kids in the class.”
The right to negotiate classroom size and composition was retained in the six-year contract. The deal also included a 7.25 per cent wage increase and improvements to extended health benefits and teaching-on-call rates.
Trepanier said local class size has been less of an issue - a view supported by superintendent Brian Pepper, who said a 2014 report showed 12 out of 836 secondary classes had more than 30 students, while no elementary classes had thirty-plus students.
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation, which represents more than
40,000 public school teachers, is headed to court again after the provincial government appealed a January decision against the government’s 2002 removal of clauses on composition and class size in the union’s collective agreement.
—see ‘PEOPLE, page 3
No P.G. New Year's baby yet
Citizen staff
Northern Health was not expecting any babies to be born at the University Hospital of Northern B.C. on New Year’s Day as 4 p.m. on Thursday.
A spokesperson for Northern Health said there were no women labouring at the Prince George hospital and none expected to arrive.
However, northern B.C.’s New Year’s Baby was born at the Fort St. John Hospital at 12:52 a.m. on New Year’s Day.
Redmond Lawrence Fitzgerald weighed eight pounds. Redmond is his parents’ - Lyeah Lamb and Bruce Fitzgerald - first child.
The first baby born in B.C. was delivered at Peace Arch Hospital in White Rock at five seconds after midnight on New Year’s Day.
HANDOUTPHOTO
Redmond Lawrence Fitzgerald, centre, was the first baby born in 2015 in the Northern Health region. Redmond is mom Lyeah Lamb and dad Bruce Fitzgerald's first child.
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