Tuesday
December 25, 2012 (Vol. 37 No. 103)
w w w. p e a c e a r c h n e w s . c o m
Armed crossing: Though firearm training was put on hold following the shooting of a border guard in South Surrey, the seriousness of the incident only furthers resolve to strengthen border security. › see page 11
Hockey tragedy aftermath
Mental-health issues
3 years sought for bus attacks
A ‘new normal’ Tracy Holmes Staff Reporter
Richard Morrison knew something was wrong when he looked at his hands after falling playing hockey and realized he couldn’t move them. Lying chest-down on the ice at Burnaby 8 Rinks after tripping over the goalie pads on a breakaway, Morrison remembers looking up at the goal line and then further up, to the boards. “I remember saying ‘uh oh,’” he said. “Once I saw that I couldn’t move my hands, I knew I was in trouble. “I remember it clear as day.” Morrison, 48, was rendered a quadriplegic in the April 21 fall, which sent him crashing head-first into the boards. Transported to Royal Columbian and then Vancouver General Hospital, he spent 6½ hours in surgery, five weeks in VGH’s spinal unit and 4½ months at GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre. He returned home to South Surrey on Oct. 30. Reflecting on his accident and the “new normal” that has confined him to an electric wheelchair, Morrison said it could be years before the full extent of his injuries is clear; before he knows just how much use of his limbs might return. Doctors won’t give him a formal diagnosis until a year passes, he said, because it will be at least that long before swelling of his spinal cord fully subsides. › see page 4
Tracy Holmes photo
Richard Morrison with daughter Jessa.
Dan Ferguson Black Press
Christmas strummings
Boxing Day Sale
50% off everything in the store
see page 17 for details!
Boaz Joseph photo
Peter Luongo directs his Langley Ukulele Ensemble – a student group he has led for 32 years – at the ensemble’s holiday concert, A Ukulele Christmas: 2012, at Peace Portal Alliance Church in South Surrey last week.
19158 - 48th Avenue 2 Stores (corner of 192nd & 48th) Surrey 2124 - 128th Street, Ocean Park Open Boxing Day 8am - 4pm
Steven Fayant told a psychiatrist he choked a Coast Mountain bus driver in Newton because he didn’t like the way the man was driving. And days later, he said, he stabbed a bus passenger in Aldergrove because he thought the man was laughing at him. The results of a court-ordered psychiatric interview of the 20-year-old Surrey resident was read out in Surrey Provincial Court last week during Fayant’s sentencing hearing. Fayant, a gaunt, pale man with close-cropped hair and a goatee, sat impassively in the prisoner’s docket Thursday morning, as the prosecutor and his own lawyer said both attacks were completely unprovoked and irrational. Crown counsel Angela Lee said Fayant talked his way into a free ride on both TransLink routes by pleading poverty. On Feb. 18, he got on the White Rock-bound 321 bus near 76 Avenue and King George Boulevard and told the driver he didn’t have enough for the fare. “I’m kind of hurting,” Fayant is quoted as saying. Not long afterwards, the onboard bus security video recorded Fayant lunging at the driver and grabbing him around the throat. The driver suffered a small nick to his neck, likely from a fingernail. Fayant fled the scene. On Feb. 21, Fayant stabbed a 41-year-old man in the back after both men got off a Coast Mountain bus near Aldergrove Centre Mall. The injured man suffered a lacerated kidney and was unable to work for three months. Fayant told the psychiatrist he believed that two men sitting nearby on the bus were laughing at him and were somehow connected › see page 2