Coquitlam Now April 20 2011

Page 1

Serving Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore and Belcarra since 1984

FRESH

WEDNESDAY April 20, 2011

It ’s easy to give Add a Coupon to your cart

33

and help support your local food bank the whole year through.

It ’s 0 2 $ 0 1 $5 $

easy

Coquitlam’s Ruky Abdulai turns up the heat in the heptathlon.

FRESH

FRE SH

FRES H

bank in

your area

for

pon Add a Cou cart! to your

.

Food For Give this coup on Fami lies er and to the cashi sure $20 we’ll make the food gets to area. bank in your

Your source for local news, sports, opinion and entertainment: www.thenownews.com

Hitting the right note for music

Plehanov trial delayed to 2012

Jennifer McFee

Simone Blais

jmcfee@thenownews.com

sblais@thenownews.com It will be 2012 before a former Coquitlam substitute teacher stands trial on sexual abuse charges. Aleksandr Vladimirov Plehanov, 36, is facing five counts each of sexual assault and sexual interference of a minor, and his trial had been scheduled to begin in Port Coquitlam provincial court Monday. That morning, however, defence counsel Lisa Helps began arguments to seek an adjournment, citing a massive amount of paperwork in the case. “This case is subject to voluminous materials,” Helps said, adding that 2,190 pages of disclosed evidence and statements have arrived since the trial confirmation hearing on March 30. While some of the disclosure documents involve standard administrative information, Helps told the court, witness statements and investigator notes require more scrutiny to build a proper defence. Crown Wendy van Tongeren Harvey argued the trial should go ahead, given that several children — between eight and 11 years old — and their families had mentally prepared to testify this week. “There’s already been a significant lapse in time,” van Tongeren Harvey argued, noting that adjourning the eightday trial would create another lengthy gap in the case’s progression. “It’s a very, very difficult and very sad thing to lose those eight days when we have six children ready to testify.”  CONT. ON PAGE 8, see TRIAL.

Jason Lang/NOW

PASSIONATE ABOUT MUSIC: Heritage Woods Secondary student Andrew Nero, 15, says music is the best part of his day: “To take away music from my life would be to take away my voice — mute my life, in essence.”

A chorus of voices has banded together to bolster music education in the Tri-Cities. Donna Mah, music teacher at Castle Park Elementary, said nearly half the elementary schools in School District 43 have no specialized music teachers. As a result, students may not be meeting provincial guidelines for music education. “Of the 45 schools in our district, we have on record 23 teachers listed as music specialists,” Mah said at a school board budget meeting earlier this month. “What is happening in the other 22 schools, we wonder.” Music teacher Ray Faoro’s daughter attends kindergarten in one of these schools. “The school she attends doesn’t have a music teacher, like so many schools in our district … Classroom generalist teachers, some of them try their best, but the fact is that most generalist teachers are uncomfortable teaching music and quite often it gets neglected in a lot of our schools,” said Faoro, a music teacher at Summit Middle School. “Our school, the one my daughter attends, didn’t even have a Christmas concert, for example, and that concerns me.” Meanwhile, the Burnaby and Surrey school districts have music specialists at all their elementary schools, Faoro added. “We really need to try to hire more trained music teachers for our schools so that we have more equal access,” he said. “Our School District 43 mission statement says to ensure quality learning opportunities for all students of all ages, so we really should try to provide them with properly trained teachers as well at all of our schools.”  CONTINUED ON PAGE 4, see STUDENT SPEAKING OUT.

Rally in Coquitlam over Schoenborn Simone Blais sblais@thenownews.com If the B.C. Review Board hasn’t heard that the Tri-Cities are against Allan Schoenborn’s escorted leaves from the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, they will today (Wednesday). A rally has been organized at 5 p.m. at Coquitlam City Hall on the eve of Schoenborn’s new hearing to show support for his ex-wife, Darcie Clarke, who lives in the community.

Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart said the rally is a way for the public to express sentiments over recent news about Schoenborn, who has caused quite a stir in the local community. “This has to change. It’s wrong in so many ways,” Stewart said. “We’re not attacking anyone here, but we have to make it very clear that what happened to Darcie Clarke and what happened to our community is wrong.” Schoenborn killed his three young children — Kaitlynne, 10, Max, 8, and Cordon, 5 — while watching

over them in Merritt in 2008, and was deemed not criminally responsible as a result of a mental disorder (NCRMD) because of his long history with psychosis. He has since been housed in the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital near Colony Farm, and two weeks ago was granted escorted leaves into the community to get a coffee by the B.C. Review Board. Public outcry over the matter reached a feverish pitch after the family of Clarke, Schoenborn’s ex-wife,

revealed that the victim was living in Coquitlam and terrified for her life — and that the review board doctor who made the decision in Schoenborn’s case did not even know of the victim’s whereabouts. Stewart said he contacted Clarke’s cousin when it came to light that she was living with her in Coquitlam, and offered assistance. “I was concerned for the ramifications for a woman who has really tried  CONTINUED ON PAGE 8, see TRI-CITIES.

Math success is a phone call away. Coquitlam 604.941.9166 www.sylvanbc.ca


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
Coquitlam Now April 20 2011 by Glacier Community Publishing - Issuu