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GAS TAX Fund is enabling Kelowna airport to introduce new infrastructure measures to improve energy efficiency
WEST KELOWNA Warriors are 8-0-1 in their last nine games and trail Okanagan rival Penticton Vees by only four points for first place in the BCHL Interior Division.
THE FIRST step in adjusting to our third stage of life as seniors is to not fight but rather embrace the changes it brings to our lives, says columnist Marjorie Horne.
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TUESDAY January 21, 2014 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
Drug dealer made big mistake
Jennifer Smith
STAFF REPORTER
It will be Thursday before Kelowna learns the story of how and why Neil Elliott Collins escaped custody in December, shutting down the bridge and sending police on a citywide manhunt. Collins was in court Monday to be sentenced for three of 20 counts against him after RCMP nabbed him as the kingpin in a drug operation based on the Westside. “He knows he screwed up in a big way,” admitted his lawyer, Cory Armour, as he summed up the case that earned his client 1,201 days—3 1/4 years in prison. Police initially arrested Collins in May, boxing him in his car to ensure he could not run, after one of his alleged drug runners, Adrienne Barregar, was apprehended in front of Kelly O’Bryan’s Restaurant. She had been seen picking up an array of drugs and drug paraphernalia from the condominium Collins shared with another of his alleged drug runners at 2210 Sundance Drive in the Shannon Lake neighbourhood. Owing to her public arrest, Collins was alerted to the fact the Mounties See Dealer A8
DON SIPOS/CONTRIBUTOR
ROLLOVER…Fortunately nobody was injured after this SUV spun out of control at the intersection of Richter and Lakeshore in the Mission area of south
Kelowna on Sunday at about 4 p.m. There were four occupants, all males, in the vehicle with Alberta license plates but none were seriously injured in the mishap, said Kelowna RCMP.
▼ KELOWNA
Queensway site eyed to locate visitor centre Alistair Waters ASSISTANT EDITOR
Kelowna city hall’s plan for a new tourist information centre, on a downtown waterfront parking lot at the foot of Queensway, has won the unanimous support of council. “It’s all about location, lo-
cation, location,” said Coun. Maxine DeHart. “This is not a good location, it’s the perfect location.” The new site, chosen after council heard loud and clear from the public that it did not want to see a larger building built in part of nearby City Park, is expected to house a low-rise
building of about 5,000-squarefeet. While some in the community argued a highway location such as the one now being used in the Chamber of Commerce building on Harvey Avenue is better because it is more convenient to capture drive-by traffic, all on council Monday,
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as well as the chairman of Tourism Kelowna, said times have changed and “rubber-wheel” traffic is not as important for a visitor information centre anymore. Stan Martindale said with the popularity of the Internet and GPS, the existing centre on Harvey Avenue is not the spot
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for maps and directions anymore. He said now what’s important is selling visitors on what there is to do here, and that can best be done in an area where visitors already are, namely Kelowna’s downtown waterfront. See Locate A8
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