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Blood samples create cancer fighting resource Alistair Waters ASSISTANT EDITOR
festive light display outside the Landmark buildings, facing Highway 97 adjacent to the pedestrian overpass. The Tree of Hope is over 120-feet tall and has approximately 25,000 bulbs.
▼ HYATT MURDER TRIAL
Accused teenager testifies she is innocent The West Kelowna teen accused of fatally stabbing her friend at a 2010 house party claimed innocence this week, but not without offering up another suspect in the process. “You did not stab Ashlee Hyatt to defend yourself?” Crown Counsel Murray Kaay asked the18-year-old, whose name is protected under a youth publication ban. “No, I did not,” she said. “You did not even accidentally stab Ashlee Hyatt?” “No, I did not,” she said.
Taking a departure from party-goer testimony that preceded hers in the previous weeks of trial, the accused told the jury she didn’t face Hyatt, 16, alone in a fatal scuffle, on June 2, 2010. Instead, she, the host of the party, and Hyatt got into a “ball” of hair pulling, scratching and punching all at once, and the one holding the knife when Hyatt went down with a five-centimetre-deep cut to her neck, was most likely the host, she said. According to her recollection of the night, their fatal fight started with a three-way argu-
ment in the middle of a Peachland street. Hyatt had told the accused to leave the party after she allegedly kissed someone who wasn’t her boyfriend, but the accused wanted to stay and talk it out. In particular, she wanted the boyfriend to know that she had actually thwarted the advances of another boy, but Hyatt and the party host were having none of it and had placed themselves between the couple. “I shoved (them) away from me with my forearm,” she said, noting later that she was “annoyed” or “irritated” by the fact
nobody was listening to her. She used those words a number of times to explain her emotional state that night, denying suggestions she was angry, or upset that her friends had seemingly turned on her. The girls shoved the accused back, then the fighting began. “Ashlee punched me, then I punched her, and it turned into a big ball of punching and scratching.” The melee went on for two to three minutes, and got “really rough,” she said. “I looked over and I saw (Hyatt) lying on the ground.” She said that she didn’t
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know why Hyatt was down, but when she continued fighting with the party host she seemingly got a hint. “The first time I saw the knife, Ashlee was down…me and (the host) were separated for a half second, and she had a knife in her hand,” she said. “She wasn’t trying to stab me. She was just holding it and flailing around.” Eventually the accused said she got the upper hand, so she grabbed the knife that she claimed to never have seen beSee Teenager A6
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LET THERE BE LIGHT…A crew work to replace broken or otherwise non-functioning Christmas light bulbs in preparation for erecting the Tree of Hope
the
Newly-diagnosed cancer patients in the Southern Interior are being asked to help researchers in their fight against the disease by joining what the head of the project here calls a “biobank.” Dr. Janine Davies, a medical oncologist with the B.C. Cancer Agency in Kelowna and the principle investigator with PREDICT (Personal Response Determinants In Cancer Therapy), told the B.C. Cancer Foundation’s annual Discovery Lunch Wednesday that by taking donated blood samples from patients, researchers could discover why some cancers affect people differently. “PREDICT will help make patients part of the solution to the cancer problem by enabling our research to focus on the important questions,” said Davies. “It will create a resource of patient information, blood samples, and eventually tumour samples, that can be used by researchers worldwide. “These samples will help us to shape future treatment decisions, improving outcomes for patients down the road.“ This follows the model of a similar pilot project that started in Victoria in 2006.
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