A FIRST IN B.C.: SENTENCING IN KAMLOOPS FOR DEALING FENTANYL TIM PETRUK
STAFF REPORTER
tim@kamloopsthisweek.com
These are fenatnyl pills seized by police last year in Calgary. The fentanyl pills Matthew Hickson planned to sell were stamped to look like Percocet.
A sentencing hearing began Tuesday for a Kamloops drug dealer busted with a stash of fentanyl pills stamped to look like Percocet — a legal step the Crown says is the first fentanyl sentencing in B.C. Matthew Hickson, 32, pleaded guilty to one count each of possession for the purpose of trafficking cocaine and fentanyl.
Federal Crown prosecutor Anita Chan is seeking a four-year prison sentence, relying on cases from Ontario courts where fentanyl traffickers have received very stiff sentences — including a firsttime offender ordered to spend six years behind bars. Hickson was busted by police in November 2014. Undercover officers followed him and a co-accused, Racquel Friedel, from a Sahali
KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK THURSDAY
home to a house in Langley. On the way back to Kamloops, police pulled the pair over and discovered a Louis Vuitton bag containing nearly 400 grams of cocaine and 490 fentanyl pills made to look like oxycodone, also known as Percocet. Court heard the cocaine had a street value of up to $38,000 and the fentanyl could have fetched nearly $10,000 if sold for $20 per pill.
See CROWN, A6
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APRIL 28, 2016 | Volume 29 No. 51
Off to tour mining towns
‘Warrior blood’ in Ajax debate
ANDREA KLASSEN
CAM FORTEMS STAFF REPORTER cam@kamloopsthisweek.com
JACKO LAKE — Two Chilcotin First Nations leaders who stared down a mining company and changed the nature of land title in this country urged Secwepemc people gathered at the Ajax mine site yesterday to stand up for their rights. Several hundred people, many of them schoolchildren, were at the pit edge days before a coalition of the Tk’emlups and Skeetchestn Indian bands launches a unique panel review overseen by member families and representatives. “You get my warrior blood going again,” Tsilhqot’in tribal chief
STAFF REPORTER
andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
Councillors opposed to the proposed Ajax mine will outnumber those who don’t on a city delegation set to tour open-pit mines in Ontario and Quebec this week. Councillors Tina Lange and Denis Walsh, who are both against the KGHM’s proposed copper and gold mine south of Aberdeen, will accompany Mayor Peter Milobar on the trip, which begins tomorrow. Milobar said he and Lange will spend Saturday in Timmins, Ont., Sunday and Monday in Malartic, Que., and Tuesday and Wednesday in Sudbury, Ont. Walsh, who is travelling separately, said he will join the delegation in Timmins and Malartic and may stay longer if he feels he hasn’t taken enough meetings in those cities. “I’m not interested in Sudbury. I’ve been to Sudbury and I don’t think it’s as relevant as Timmins and Malartic,” he said. Milobar said councillors will meet with a variety of groups in all three cities, including concerned citizens’ groups and mayors and councils in each community. “It’s a variety depending on the city. They all have slightly different set-ups, but it’s from chambers of commerce to different community advisory groups they have for the mines and the mining companies themselves,” Milobar said.
Joe Alphonse said as he smiled to the crowd. “This is worth fighting for.” Alphonse was one of a number of Tsilhqot’in leaders invited to the what the Tk’emlups and Skeetchestn — under the banner of Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc (SSN) — call Pipsell Lake, otherwise known as Jacko Lake. Recent anthropological study under guidance of the bands determined Jacko Lake, immediately beside the proposed Ajax mine pit, forms one of the founding legends of the culture and was an important food fishery. See FIRST NATIONS, A10
Cultural leader Ed Jensen leads a tour before a First Nations panel review on Ajax. Experts say rocks to the left were piled by ancestors of these children to create a hunting blind.
CAM FORTEMS/KTW
See MAYOR, A6
Savings & Rewards See Page A2 For More Details
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