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DECEMBER 9, 2014 | Volume 27 No. 146
CHEERS TO ALL OF YOU
WEATHER Showers, warm High 11 C Low 7 C
SUN PEAKS SNOW REPORT Mid-mountain: 66 cm Alpine: 76 cm Snow phone: 250-578-7232
The donations are arriving
TROUBLED BRIDGE OVER WATER A10
A3
Council adopts iPads Kamloops city council is going digital. Rather than use paper agendas for their meetings, mayor and council will read reports and make notes on a set of iPads. Director of corporate services and community safety David Duckworth said the move to iPads will save the city thousands of dollars in printing and delivery costs. Duckworth said the cost of printing the agendas and having them couriered to councillors on the Friday before each meeting cost about $15,000 a year. The iPads, by comparison, cost $8,100, about $900 each. Duckworth said councillors will use an iCompass app that allows them to add notes to the agenda and to highlight or underline the text in much the same way one can mark up a paper agenda. The program follows a pilot program last term, in which four councillors tested the iPads and software.
Balbar nears jury decision CAM FORTEMS
STAFF REPORTER
cam@kamloopsthisweek.com
DAVE EAGLES/KTW Olivia (left) and Emma Tranah work with Bandit, one of six Pomeranians their family brought back to Kamloops from a rescue shelter in California. The girls do hydrotherapy with the dogs to help them regain their health.
DOGGED DETERMINATION DALE BASS
STAFF REPORTER
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A
few rules had to be broken as the Tranah family made its way back to Kamloops from Sacramento. After all, hotels and motels will often let guests bring in a dog for the overnight stay — but not six of them. But, said Krista Tranah, once people learned the reason for the trip she, husband Kris and daughters Olivia and
Emma were taking, the family was, for the most part, greeted with an emotional “awww.” The Tranahs are involved with the Pommy Country Pomeranian Rescue, a Barrierebased haven and adoption organization for Pomeranians. They made the 4,000-kilometre round-trip trek to pick up the dogs and are now working to restore their health and get them adoption-ready. Because the family has been home-schooling the girls — Olivia is in Grade 5 and Emma in Grade 4 — since earlier this
year, they turned the voyage into an ongoing educational experience, Krista said, talking about the geography of the land they traversed, the different political systems in the U.S. and exposing them to some of the art and culture along the way. “We talked non-stop,” she said. Much of the learning was focused on the dogs because both girls hope to become veterinarians when they finish school. See POMS A2
A man on trial for second-degree murder “feared for his life” when his girlfriend Heather Hamill came at him with a machete, a defence lawyer told a 12-member jury yesterday (Dec. 8). “He couldn’t walk out and leave this crazy woman with his son there,” said Jim Blazina, who is representing accused killer Robert Balbar. Blazina urged the B.C. Supreme Court jury to find Balbar not guilty, arguing he acted in selfdefence to protect both himself and his young son from his raging girlfriend, hyped up on methadone and crystal meth — substances found in her body. But, Crown prosecutor Iain Currie argued nothing Balbar said inside or outside court is true. He urged the jury to instead rely on physical evidence of nine or 10 hammer blows to Hamill’s head. “Mr. Balbar exaggerated and lied and told stories . . . You can’t rely on Mr. Balbar’s
A-Z,” Currie said of his recounting of events in the trial. Instead, the prosecutor said, the jury it should rely on “the A-G” — blows to Hamill’s head so labelled by a pathologist who testified earlier. Yesterday, the defence and Crown presented final arguments as the trial, now in its 19th day, neared completion. Blazina cautioned the jury about the chance of wrongful conviction with use of the Mr. Big scenario by RCMP. Balbar was lured into a fictitious gang with promises of money and sex, with the goal of getting him to confess to killing Hamill in July of 2003. Balbar did make that confession, telling the supposed crime boss that Hamill came at him with a machete. “She wanted to f—ing take off and I wasn’t going to have the heat come down on me,” he said in a videotaped confession to Mr. Big heard earlier in the trial. See CROWN, A6
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