ANTI-DIKING PROTESTORS DRAW RCMP ATTENTION Police presence at city hall as placard waving residents give council an earful { Page A3 }
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Chilliwack
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THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2015
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Laura’s chair found
Playing politics
Federal election months away, but battle for voters is heating up
Family grateful for outpouring of love, support and donations
BY PAUL J. HENDERSON phenderson@chilliwacktimes.com
T
BY GREG LAYCHAK glaychak@chilliwacktimes.com
911 GONE
heritage house she rents at about 2:30 a.m. The glass screen door on her front porch was ajar, muddy footprints covered the wood. She was nervous, but the front door was locked. So she went in the house, noticed one of her cats look at her through an open door to the living room that should have been closed. She ran to let her pit bull puppy out of her kennel, checked the back door and saw it had been kicked open. Then she called 911. “The operator asked if he was still there,” Wilson said. “I said ‘I have no idea, I haven’t explored the house.’ He said ‘Chances are he’s still long gone.’” Then the operator told her to yell out: “Is there anyone in the house, I’m on the phone with the police.” “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ He cut me off and said ‘Just do it.’” That’s when Wilson says she was informed the police were not coming. After she followed the dispatcher’s directions to call out and no one responded he said, “See, they are long gone. We’ll be there in the morning.” { See 911, page A6 }
{ See WHEELCHAIR, page A5 }
Jocelyn Wilson and her dog Rowan on the porch of her Sardis home that was broken into in December. BY PAUL J. HENDERSON phenderson@chilliwacktimes.com
W
hat happens when a 911 operator makes a mistake and tells a caller facing a potentially dangerous situation to do something even more dangerous? That’s what Jocelyn Wilson faced when a drunk man broke into her house in the middle of the night, went upstairs into her bedroom, and urinated in her bed before (or after) he passed out. Four months after the bizarre incident in her Sardis home and Wilson is still mortified by the experience, plagued with a case of the “what-ifs.” “It makes me sick to think, what if that was my kids that called? What if that was an elderly woman that called? I was lucky it was just some dumb kid,” she tells the Times. “What if it was someone else that actually was hiding and had malicious intent to rape me?” Police, meanwhile, concede something indeed went wrong that night with the emergency dispatching and
WRONG
the problem will be corrected.
Discovered man in her bed It was Dec. 13 and Wilson, a single mother of two teenagers, had a rare girls’ night out with her kids at their dad’s house. She returned home to the large
I
t has been a busy week for the Kew family. After thieves took away young Laura Kew’s independence when they stole her wheelchair with the family van, the online community rallied to get her a new one with over $20,000 in donations from a gofundme campaign. Then, on Sunday, police found the sixyear-old’s custom-fitted chair after media coverage elicited a tip to local RCMP. “ It i s n ’ t i n the best look- Laura Kew’s cusing condition tom wheelchair externally but has been found, can most likely worse for wear, but be repaired,” repairable says her Laura’s moth- mother. er Charlene Kew wrote on her Facebook page. “Laura’s team including our chair mechanic/modifier will be having a look at it today or tomorrow and hope
Paul J. Henderson/TIMES
6894851
he federal election may be seven months off but fundraising, doorknocking and rhetoric is well underway in Chilliwack. The electoral district known as Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon has been a bastion of Conservativism for decades, and while the newly configured riding of Chilliwack-Hope is expected by experts to only help the governing party, Liberal candidate Louis De Jaeger thinks MP Mark Strahl is nervous. “People are disappointed with Mark in general,” De Jaeger said in response to questions about a Conser vative riding association fundraising Liberal candidate letter the Times obtained. Louis De Jaeger The letter, dated March 18, focused on a recent Liberal fundraising dinner in Chilliwack that raised $15,000 and featured Vancouver Liberal MP Hedy Fry. “True to form Hedy had something offensive to say about Chilliwack-Hope,” the letter signed by Strahl reads. “She said that the Liberals should have a better chance of winning here in the next election because, ‘we know the demographics { See POLITICS, page A4 }
604.792.5151 8645 Young Rd. Chilliwack www.jadamandsons.com
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