THE WEDNESDAY
CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
AUG. 14, 2013
TRI-CITY NEWS CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
Show and shine
Pipe bands at worlds
SEE LIFE, PAGE 13
SEE ARTS, PAGE 19
www.tricitynews.com
INSIDE
Tom Fletcher/10 Letters/11 A Good Read/17 Sports/23-24
Scam artist picks the wrong mark By Gary McKenna THE TRI-CITY NEWS
WILLIAM ISSA/THE TRI-CITY NEWS
A recreational vehicle caught fire along the Mary Hill Bypass last Friday. The fire extended up the hillside, consuming the dry brush at a rapid pace as the blaze moved uphill towards Citadel Drive townhomes. SEE FULL STORY PAGE 7
A con artist who goes house-to-house claiming he has been in a car accident and needs money, picked the wrong person to scam when he knocked on Darlene Browning’s door last month. Th e 7 0 - ye a r- o l d Coquitlam resident is a long time Block Watch captain, a member of Citizen Crime Watch and a Community Police Station volunteer. She recognized the man immediately from a photo she had seen of him at the station and informed him that she knew what he was up to. “I said ‘I know exactly who you are,’” she told The Tri-City News on Monday. “But he wouldn’t leave.” The man pressed on with his story, claim-
ing that a neighbour had told him to come to Browning’s door and that she would be able to give him $18.50. His hands were moving around erratically and Browning eventually closed the door on him and called the police. When a Coquitlam RCMP officer who was patrolling the area caught up with the man down the road, he was arrested on an outstanding warrant. A week after the incident Browning was working at the Community Police Station when a man who lives in the Como Lake area claimed he had been scammed. He had managed to take a photo of the suspect, who was the same man that had been arrested near Browning’s house the week before. see POLICE, page 6
Feeding bears = dead animals, say COs By Diane Strandberg THE TRI-CITY NEWS
Well-meaning but uninformed animal lovers who have been leaving treats such as bird seed and peanut butter for bears may as well be signing their death warrant. That’s the conclusion drawn by conservation officers who destroyed one bear in Coquitlam last week after it stalked people and crashed a family barbecue because it lost its fear of humans. A n o t h e r b e a r i n Po r t Coquitlam was hand-fed but it seems to have left the area. Const. Cody Ambrose said the PoCo bear may have returned to its senses and is hopefully now eating wild berries
and other natural foods. “There is lots of natural food sources in the city,”he said. In the Coquitlam case, the culprit who fed the now deceased bear hasn’t been located but pails of bird seed and peanut butter have been found. In the Port Coquitlam situation a homeless person was found to be feeding a bear out of his hand. Ambrose said the homeless person was not fined but was told he could be endangering the lives of bears by feeding them. “The bear would come right up and eat out of his hand and this was on a high-use trail,” Ambrose said. The man who was feeding the bear on the Traboulay PoCo Trail near Lougheed Highway
bridge was immediately apologetic and promised to stop the free lunches. “It was explained to him the bear would be put down, he was photographed and put into our system,” Ambrose said. “We do believe it [the feeding] has stopped.” However, the Coquitlam bear wasn’t so lucky and was shot last week after it started exhibiting dangerous behaviour consistent with a bear fed by humans. In one instance, the bear ambled into a barbecue attended by 12 people, in another it approached a group of construction workers without fear, and at one point even stalked someone carrying groceries right to their front door.
“That behaviour is consistent with feeding,” Ambrose said, expressing concern that bears can pose a danger to people if they are fed because they become persistent and aren’t deterred by efforts to scare them away. It took conservation officers three weeks to locate and finally destroy the bear — a sad situation that could have been avoided, Ambrose added. Meanwhile, COs report the number of bear complaints is about the same as last year, with some people still leaving their garbage out, which attracts the hungry bruins. However, complaints are down about bears in blueberry fields, likely because more farmers have electric fences. dstrandberg@tricitynews.com
TRI-CITY FILE PHOTO
Conservation officers are telling the public to stop leaving out food for bears.