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THURSDAY
Thursday, March 13, 2014 X Volume 27 No. 29
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VAPING AT SCHOOLS WILL BE VERBOTEN By Cam Fortems STAFF REPORTER
cam@kamloopsthisweek.com
If they’re doing it now, students at city high schools won’t be vaping much longer. The Kamloops-Thompson school district intends to ban electronic cigarettes following discussion with Interior Health Authority officials. “All the information we’ve receive is they’re a health hazard,” trustee Gerald Watson said. E-cigarettes use battery power to heat up and vaporize — hence the slang “vaping” — a E-cigarettes are battery-operated solution of water, fladevices that are designed to look vouring agents and, like and be used in the same sometimes, nicotine. manner as regular cigarettes. The district is takThese devices contain cartridges ing action to ban that may be filled with nicotine, e-cigarettes at schools as flavouring and other chemicals. part of its regular policy E-cigarettes electronically review. vaporize a solution creating a mist E-cigarettes will be that is breathed into the lungs. included in a new policy Although not approved by Health and brought to the board Canada, they are readily available of education for approvto purchase in Canadian retail al this spring. outlets and from the internet. Watson said the comIn 2009, Health Canada issued an mittee put the word out to local principals at advisory warning Canadians the high-school level to to not use e-cigarettes. determine if students were vaping. “Some said ‘yes,’” Watson said. E-cigarettes are sold in city convenience stores, at London Drugs and at other retailers. One of them, Lemonade Stand owner Wesley Lesosky, said his customers aren’t kids.
E-CIGARETTES
X See HEALTH CANADA A11
Lytton’s Sandy Charlie (right) vanished in 1999 and his body was found in 2011. Charlie’s son, Sandy Cleghorn (left), died looking for his father. Following a four-week trial in B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops, a jury has found Rob Smith guilty of manslaughter and interfering with a dead body. Smith will be sentenced on Friday, March 14.
Smith found guilty of manslaughter By Tim Petruk
STAFF REPORTER
tim@kamloopsthisweek.com
Rob Smith showed little emotion in a Kamloops courtroom on Wednesday, March 12, as a jury found him guilty as charged on one count each of manslaughter and interfering with a dead body. The 46-year-old sighed heavily as the verdict was read, bringing to an end a fourweek trial in B.C. Supreme Court and nearly 15 years of unanswered questions for the family of Sandy Charlie. Charlie was 48 when he went missing from Lytton in December 1999. Smith was suspected in his disappearance as early as 2007 but, court heard, police did not have enough evidence to make an arrest. That changed on Sept. 12, 2011, when an excavator doing work on Crown land near Lytton accidentally unearthed Charlie’s remains. Months later, RCMP launched an undercover Mr. Big sting targeting Smith.
That four-month operation culminated in a videotaped confession in August 2012. Smith was arrested a few days after confessing and has been in custody since. Linda Phillips, Charlie’s former wife, sat through every day of the trial in B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops. She exchanged tearful hugs with family members outside the courtroom following the verdict. “We have closure for what happened,” Phillips told KTW. “I’m relieved now. It’s what needed to be done. I’ll move on.” Phillips’ grief was compounded by the death of her son, Sandy Nolan Cleghorn, who perished while searching for his missing father in January 2000. Cleghorn’s body was found on March 12, 2000, on the Fraser River near Lytton. “It’s closure for all of us — what we had to go through, through all the years, wondering,” Phillips said. “Now we can go on.”
During Smith’s trial, the jury watched the videotaped confession of Smith describing the night of Charlie’s death to an undercover Mountie posing as the leader of a powerful criminal organization. “I ended up killing somebody and I just dug a hole and put him in it,” Smith said in the video, which was filmed at an RCMP covert warehouse in the Lower Mainland on Aug. 10, 2012. In the video, Smith said he beat Charlie into unconsciousness two times in a matter of minutes, upset with him for co-operating with police on a domestic-assault allegation for which Smith was arrested in April 1999. Taking the stand in his own defence, Smith told the jury he knocked out Charlie but did not kill him. He said Charlie woke up after being punched and then left under his own power. Smith is slated to return to court on March 14 to fix a date for sentencing. � Go online to kamloopsthisweek.com to read every story from the trial.