RETIRED TEACHER SENTENCED FOR SEX CRIME – PAGE 4 COUGARS KICK OFF NEW SEASON THIS SATURDAY – PAGE 8
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Thursday, March 25, 2021
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STROKE VICTIM FILES LAWSUIT MARK NIELSEN Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
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the officer. “I turned into a different person,” she said. As for the arrestee, Fortin said the man just shook his head when she asked him why he was being taken in. Fortin said she was curious because she is “always on the side of the downtrodden.” “These poor native people, I have a great empathy for the native people,” Fortin said. “I used to be a cab driver and I’ve dealt with them on various levels. I used to be a forest tech and for a couple of summers I taught these native guys from Stoney Creek and through the Native Friendship Centre how to use saws and giving them forestry skills and stuff.”
According to a statement of claim, Rochelle Turner, 44, attended the emergency department at the Lakes District Hospital and Health Centre in Burns Lake on June 28, 2019. She displayed symptoms of numbness and tingling in her right arm and fingers, blurred vision, confusion, as well as slurred speech and intermittent facial tingling. Turner was examined by a physician but no treatment was administered and she was discharged, the statement says. Two days later, she suffered a stroke “so severe that she has been left with severe, permanent, physical and mental impairments.” The single mother of four children now relies on a wheelchair and other aids to move from place to place and needs constant help with basic day-to-day tasks. Her speech has been profoundly affected and she will never be able to work again.
See OFFICER WAS on page 5
See DAMAGES on page 5
Cathy Fortin stopped to ask a police officer about why he was making an arrest on Upland Street near Milburn Avenue.
Police incident upsets bystander MARK NIELSEN Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A Prince George woman says an RCMP officer could have handled things better when she saw him make an arrest and went over to ask him why.
Cathy Fortin said she was out delivering meals to the housebound last Monday when she saw an RCMP cruiser pull onto the sidewalk on Upland Street near Milburn Avenue and stop an Indigenous man. Fortin, who was driving, said she went on to make a couple of deliveries and then returned to the spot to see what was going on. She said the officer was still talking to the man while other people had to cross the street because the sidewalk was still blocked.
She drove by and then made a second pass. This time, Fortin saw the officer put the man in the back of the cruiser. At that point, Fortin said she parked her car across the street and walked over to ask why the arrest was being made and where the man was being taken. Fortin said the response she got was not what she expected. “It was just ‘get back in your car!,’” she said. When Fortin then tried to talk to the arrestee - the cruiser’s window was down - she said the officer grabbed a fistful of her jacket and her left arm, pushed her towards her car and threatened to arrest her. Fortin said she backed off because she still had meals to deliver, although she admitted to yelling some obscenities at
A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a Burns Lake woman who suffered a debilitating stroke two days after she was discharged from the community’s hospital.