OSOYOOS TIMES-December 22, 2010
By Paul Everest – Osoyoos Times
A 51-year-old Osoyoos man who was evicted from Desert Park in the summer of 2009 after threatening an Osoyoos bylaw officer was handed a suspended sentence on Dec. 17.
Louis Joseph Lemay was arrested on June 30, 2009, when RCMP were called to Desert Park by the Town of Osoyoos’s bylaw officer, Steven Marshall, to help remove Lemay from a tack room in a barn where he had been squatting.
Lemay was charged with uttering threats towards the bylaw officer during the incident.
He was found guilty on Sept. 22, 2010, on the uttering threats charge and his sentence includes two years of probation, a firearms prohibition, a requirement that he provides the court with a DNA sample, a requirement that he stay out of Osoyoos unless passing through town and a requirement that he stays away from Osoyoos’s bylaw officers.
Lemay was also found guilty on Sept. 29, 2010, of assault with a weapon and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose in relation to a hatchet attack against former Osoyoos councillor Allan Carswell.
Carswell was pulling his boat from the water at the Haynes Point Provincial Park boat launch on Sept. 22, 2009, when Lemay approached him and swung an axe at his face.
Carswell was not seriously injured and only received a few scratches to his face.
Following the attack, police said they were concerned in the days leading up to Lemay’s confrontation with Carswell that Lemay might target someone in the community in retaliation for recent problems in his life.
Some of Lemay’s writings were found at the U.S. border and they stated that he was upset with certain people in Osoyoos for problems in his life, police said.
Carswell is involved with the South Interior Recreational Equine Centre which currently administers Desert Park and it is believed Lemay was upset with Carswell for his eviction from the park.
He is scheduled to be sentenced for the charges relating to the hatchet attack on Jan. 12.
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