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Serial killer charged in Mountain murder
■ D IVING F OR T RASH
Prisoner killed in November Robert Freeman The Progress A murder charge has finally been laid in the case of a Mountain Institution inmate found dead in his cell shared with another prisoner. Michael Wayne McGray, 45, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 33-year-old Jeremy Michael Phillips on Nov. 23, 2010. While the case of one dead prisoner found in a locked cell with another live prisoner might seem open and shut to the public, police investigators did not have the luxury of jumping to conclusions, an RCMP spokesman told The Progress. “Nothing is really open and shut in homicide or law enforcement any more,” RCMP Cpl. Dale Carr, spokesman for the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, said to explain the lengthy six-month-long delay in laying a charge. “We just needed to have the forensic analysis to ensure that somehow, somebody else didn’t get in that cell,” he said. And the suspect, McGray, wasn’t going anywhere, he added. Had the murder happened in the community, police would have put a higher priority on the evidence sent to the forensic lab for analysis. Continued: ACCUSED/ p8
Kelly Knox of Surrey rolls a tire out of Cultus Lake during a cleanup at the south end of Main Beach last weekend. Knox was with a team of about 25 divers from throughout the Fraser Valley who took part in the Splash for Trash that day. Typical items they found at the bottom of the lake were bottles, cans, cellphones, sunglasses and car parts. This area of the lake that the divers were cleaning is a popular swimming area and is also home to many fish and other water creatures that tend to ingest harmful garbage thrown into the lake. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
‘Shared ownership’ is not on the table: Yale Chief Robert Freeman The Progress Yale First Nation Chief Robert Hope says he’s willing to talk with Sto:lo leaders to ease their concerns over the treaty that will effectively give the small band control over the lucrative Fraser Canyon fishery. Hope said the Yale people are willing to talk about an agreement to work out access to fishing sites in the canyon claimed by some Sto:lo families, but would not consider a “shared territory” agreement as sug-
gested by Sto:lo Nation leader Joe Hall. “We don’t own the river, but we do own the land,” Hope said in a telephone interview Friday. And as owners of the land, he explained, the Yale people must manage it to ensure its highest and best use. “The way I see it, this is the very reason we entered the treaty process, to govern our land,” he said. So, access is on the table, but shared ownership is not. However, Sto:lo leaders say they have ample evidence to back up their
claim to the land, but federal and provincial negotiators have ignored it to date. Further, the Sto:lo claim the proposed treaty violates the B.C. treaty process and the completion of “shared territory agreements” before final settlements are signed because at that point they become constitutionally protected. Hall also suggested in an earlier interview that it is “morally” wrong for federal and provincial negotiators to give control over the canyon and other sites sacred to 10,000 Sto:lo to the 150 members of the Yale First
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The issue is not an “over-lapping” land claim, he added, but “a Sto:lo village that’s attempting to get a treaty” that gives it the ability to determine access to an area that he said “belongs to all Sto:lo.” But Chief Hope adamantly denies the Yale people have any links to the Sto:lo, with their own distinct language and cultural practices. The Yale band was “lumped” into the Sto:lo tribe by English government officials as a matter of convenience, he says. Continued: TREATY/ p9
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Nation. Hall predicted “violence and bloodshed” during the fishing season, if no solution to the dispute is found, and that the Sto:lo would “never” accept any third-party’s control over culturally significant areas, like cemeteries and Transformer sites. “It’s not a fight with the Yale, it’s a fight with the government,” Hall said in an interview Monday, after taking the Sto:lo case to B.C. Aboriginal Relations Minister Mary Polak. “They’re trying to do through the back door what they couldn’t do through the front door,” he said.
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