6 - The Prince George Citizen - Monday, February 22,1999 Province Man shot after crashing through B.C. border FPI TTTVAI.F. (CP) — A San Francisco man wounded in a shootout with police Saturday is wanted by the law in California. Michael Angelo Lena, 40, was charged Sunday with attempted murder of a police officer and possession of a weapon dangerous to the public. A warrant for Lena was issued in California following an attempted break and enter last Wednesday. A suspect, cornered by police on a dead end street, pointed a handgun and was able to escape. Lena was shot Saturday after a pickup truck ran the Rykerts border crossing south of Creston. Four RCMP officers from the Trail, Salmo and Fruit-vale detachments went in pursuit. The chase ended then the fleeing ve- hicle ran over a spike belt laid by police and ended up in the ditch. RCMP said the driver came out shooting at police with a handgun. Officers returned fire, hitting the driver in the right leg and the right side. None of the officers were injured. Rainer Korn, of Nelson, was en route to his brother’s home in Fruitvale for dinner when he was nearly run off the road by the truck after it had hit the RCMP spike belt. “He nearly hit me, then ran into a ditch,” Korn told the Trail Times. “I stopped and was about to go and see if he was okay. Then I heard the pop, pop, pop of gunfire.” Korn said he dove down in his vehicle until it was over. “I thought this only happened on TV,” he said. Lena was in good condition and under guard Sunday in Trail Regional Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. He is expected to be released within the next few days, said police. Lena will face the court system in Canada before he’s extradited to the U.S., said RCMP spokesman Cpl. Randy Koch. Female sex predators are rare, says expert VANCOUVER (CP) — As he testifted that he had been sexually assaulted by a female family Counsellor involved in the custody case over his son, Mark Tisdall broke down in tears. “I honesdy believe that since I was a man people say, 'You can’t be sexually assaulted,”’ Tisdall said in B.C. Supreme Court last week. Tisdall testified that Shirley Irwin, a counsellor on government contract, sought sex in exchange for unauthorized access to his infant son. He told court Irwin threatened to end his contact with the boy if he revealed their relationship. At one point, Tisdall said he awoke on the couch at her home to find Irwin on top of him, sexually assaulting him. Tisdall may be right in assuming that people would scoff at his allegations, suggests a psychologist who has studied sexual assault. “Often people, and this includes judges, don’t treat these as a ... simple sexual assault,” says Linda Coates, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Victoria. While the number of female sexual predators is rare, there are such women even though society is loath to believe it, Coates says. Last week, a Saskatchewan teacher was convicted of sexually assaulting one of her female students more than a decade ago. And in Vancouver last November, a man described three years of abuse at the hands of his female teacher. Citing the case of Seattle teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, who has been jailed after bearing two children with a young student, Coates says society often believes male victims “just got lucky.” This is the scene of a bus accident that took place last week in Victoria, killing a Saskatoon man and seriously injuring his wife. The bus driver was unaware of the accident. Bus driver unaware of involvement in crash Bethesda Counselling If You Hurt... We Can Help Professional Counselling Services Nancy Kerr M. Div., M.A. (Clinical Psychology) Trudy Mothus M. Ed. Counselling, Cert. Reality Therapy Brian Joyce Masters Counselling, BCACC , Gladys Plett M.A. Counselling 562-4781 575 Quebec Street VICTORIA (CP) — The driver of a tour bus that police believe may have been involved in an accident that killed a Saskatoon man and seriously injured his wife didn’t know about the accident, says the tour bus company. The 64-year-old driver has taken a leave of absence, said George Almas of Richmond-based International Stage Lines. “He was quite shaken,” Almas said in a telephone interview. “He said he didn’t know this had happened. When I called him on the radio, he was stunned, wondering why this was happening, why I wanted him to bring the coach back in.” Four Victoria police officers inter- viewed the driver late Friday. No charges were laid. Michael Misanchuk, 27, died at the scene of the accident Thursday. His wife Samantha Misanchuk, 29, was in serious but stable condition in the in-tensive-care unit of Victoria General Hospital. The Saskatoon couple, married only sue months, was visiting Victoria. Almas said the man police interviewed is the company’s most senior driver with a good 20-year driving record. He was the only person on the bus. On Saturday police drove through the intersection where the accident occurred on a bus similar to the International Stage Lines buses. Home delivery Coll 562-3301 —~ PRINCE GEORGE Citizen CARIBOO RESTAURANT MONDAY & TUESDAY Dinner Special for Two 2 • 8 oz. Sirloin Steaks Prime “AAA” Beef with Fantail Shrimp or Scallops Includes baked potato or rice and all you can eat salad bar. $2495 Z. Cariboo Steak and Seafood Restaurant For reservations call... 1 l65-5th Ave • 564-1220 Invasion tips sought Southam Newspapers Vancouver police want to hear from an anonymous tipster again. The tipster called police last week with “some information about two suspects” in a series of home invasions, Const. Tom McCluski, lead investigator for the home-invasion task force, said yesterday. He said the tipster led police to believe he or she knew more about the recent home invasions. “We know for a fact that there are two suspects,” McCluski said. “We want to talk to the caller about it more. We’re just asking them to call us back.” It’s been three weeks since the city’s last home invasion, which McCluski said could mean the invaders are scared and lying low. “There’s been a lot of press coverage and we could be knocking on doors too close to the suspects already, but we don’t know,” he said. “The (three-week) break could mean nothing, too. We’ve had breaks like this in the past. It’s been going on for five years.” The longest break between invasions was 18 months, so police aren’t confident the suspects are finished. Atlantic salmon thrive on coast VANCOUVER (CP) — Atlantic salmon that have escaped from fish farms have made their way into every river system on the B.C. coast, says a scientist. “They are everywhere,” said John Volpe, a researcher at the University of Victoria. Last year Volpe discovered that escaped Atlantic salmon were spawning. And B.C. rivers are wide open for colonization because some stocks have been wiped out by logging-related flooding, and other stocks are returning in low numbers. Volpe is now trying to find out if Atlantic salmon are likely to displace native salmon and the prized steelhead. He stocked three artificial streams over the weekend to study how the three species will interact. Brad Anholt, Volpe’s supervisor, said the research is crucial because of the potential for environmental problems. “Research had not been done,” Anholt said. “Maybe there won’t be a problem — we just don’t know.” Volpe dismissed claims by the Suzuki Foundation that Atlantic salmon will be “a wave of death,” for native species. “There is no proof of that,” he said. But it would be naive to think their introduction will have no effect, he added. “The mantra of the fish-farming industry was that the fish wouldn’t go up the river and if they did, they wouldn’t spawn,” Volpe said. “And the industry said that even if the fish spawned, the young wouldn’t be able to survive. “Well, they have spawned and they have survived and they are doing very well, thank you.” Last year, Volpe discovered juvenile Atlantic salmon in the Tsitka River south of Port McNeil — the first Atlantic salmon known to have been spawned in B.C. waters. Wind knocks out ferries and power by Canadian Press VANCOUVER — Power was knocked out to thousands of homes and ferry travellers were stranded Sunday as strong winds hit southwestern British Columbia. Winds of up to 52 km/h hit the Vancouver International Airport early Sunday afternoon. Discovery Island near Victoria reported gusts of 102 km/h, and Saturna Island in the Strait of Georgia received blasts of up to 98 km/h. Falling tree branches brought down power lines in the Vancouver area, along the Sunshine Coast and east of Vancouver in the Fraser Valley. About 13,000 homes were left in the dark. B.C. Hydro restored power to all but 1,000 of those households by 5 p.m. and the rest were expected .to be reconnected by the end of the day, said company spokesman Wayne Cousins. Waves of up to 1.8 metres high forced B.C. Ferries to cancel more than 12 sailings Sunday. It’s been the windiest three months B.C. Hydro and B.C. Ferries have seen in a long time. Last November, a storm that hit the southwest corner of the province with 104 km/h winds cut power to more than 185,000 homes. Since then, B.C. Hydro has had to recuperate from 12 major windstorms. That’s four more than is typical for the winter season “and we still have 12 days to go,” Cousins said. B.C. Ferries has had to cancel 80 sailings in the past three months due to weather conditions — four times as many as it did for the whole previous year, Sharpe said. The Quality Council^^^^ of Prince George Quality Council of Prince George presents a... BC Quality Awards Awareness Seminar Find out how your organization can profit from quality in difficult times. The 2-hour BC Quality Awards Awareness Seminar will show you how ‘003111/ can pay off for your organization, and how you can enroll in the Bronze Level Award Program- the first of three levels leading to peak performance. A panel of Prince George Bronze Award winners will share their experience in earning their award, and what it meant to their organization. The BC Quality Awards Program is designed to guide, educate, encourage and recognize all organizations, regardless of size and wherever they are on the road to quality. The awards program will act as a catalyst in the development and execution of a Continuous Qualify Improvement Plan. Join The Quality Movement in Prince George! Thanks To Our Sponsors... The Citizen PGTV C101-FM 550 CKPG BC Assessment Chamber of Commerce Several Prince George organizations have completed the Bronze Level: • City of Prince George • Coast Inn of the North • Monarch Broadcasting • Royal Bank of Canada • Fred Punko & Associates • Environmental Dynamics lid. Wednesday, Februaiy 24th BC Assessment Office (Suite 200 -1777 Third Ave - IWA Building) Time: 8:30am 9:OOam-llK)Oam Registration and Light Refreshments Seminar Fee: $15 Members (plus GST) $20 Non-Members (plus GST) Facilitator: Gord Leighton, General Manager Monarch Broadcasting. Past President of the Quality Coundl of Prince George. Firefighter fights for her job by Canadian Press There was a time when Tawney Meiorin was beating back fires in British Columbia’s dense forests. But since 1994, Meiorin has instead been engaged in court battles to get back the job she lost when she failed a fitness test. Today, that battle arrives at the Supreme Court of Canada. Meiorin, represented by the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union, will ask the court to find that the mandatory fitness test was discriminatory on the basis of sex. She failed one component of the test, a 2.5-kilometre run, by taking 49 seconds longer than expected. As a result, she was fired from a job that she had done for two years. The court will consider whether the rigorous test, which is supposed to be gender-neutral, in fact constitutes discrimination. It’s the first time the high court will address the issue of whether mandatory fitness requirements for a job violate human rights laws. No matter what the outcome, the case will have significant influence on other lines of work where MEIORIN women are required to pass tests developed in predominantly male occupations like policing and aviation. The B.C. government argues the high standard of the test is necessary and accommodating women would put the safety of firefighters and the public at risk. “Lowering the minimum standard for women, or any other protected group such as the disabled or older persons, is simply not a reasonable option because it would create an unsafe situation,” government lawyers say in a court submission. Intervenors in the case will argue the test was developed without considering that women’s aerobic capacity is naturally less than men’s. The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund will argue that the fact Meiorin did the job well for two years until the test was required means the standards are too high and therefore discriminatory. “What the courts should do is ... ask (if) that rule is really neutral, rather than just accepting that since it doesn’t say \vomen need not apply,’ it’s neutral,” said Kim Buchanan, a LEAF staff lawyer. Passenger injured by rock hurled from overpass NANAIMO (CP) — A young man was taken to hospital in serious condition Sunday after a massive rock thrown off a highway overpass crashed through a windshield and crushed his face. The 21-year-old victim, whose name was not released, was flown to a Vancouver hospital and will require reconstructive surgery. Three other men who were riding in the front of the pickup were not injured when the rock was thrown from the overpass just before 2 a.m. Sunday. “I couldn’t believe it after it was all over,” said driver Colin Middlemiss, of Port Alice. Neither Middlemiss, his son Darcy, or another passenger, Jordan Young, were injured. Nanaimo RCMP believe young vandals are responsible for the random and vicious attack. “Investigators seized a substantial size rock, about 40 pounds," said Sgt. Curt Acheson of the Nanaimo RCMP. “It would not be easily dropped over the overpass. “There’s no question it was intentional.” Police want the culprits behind bars to dissuade others from attempting the same crime, Acheson said. RSVP by noon, February 22, 1 999 • Reserve your spot today! Prince George Champer of Commerce Fax 562-6510 or Phone 562-2454