What Happens when a Psychopath…
has to be tasered by COPS because he lunged at a neighbour with two knives? Well, in Ontario, that psychopath gets released on bail the very next day and is not even ordered to stay away from his victim. Fortunately, Jamie Lee Roche was not injured in the original attack because her boyfriend intervened. So you know, the COPS told the victim that they would let her know if the psychopath (or psychotic–I don’t know enough yet to determine if he is mentally ill; she claims he is a known drug user so his odd behaviour could be drug-induced, which is no excuse!) would be released but they failed to do so. Imagine her surprise when she saw him in her apartment building the next day where he also lives.
Click here to be taken to a video of the story (yes, I know, it’s the Sun…but I went there to check out another story I heard on the radio). And the written story is contained in the COMMENTS section below.
February 1st, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Jamie Lee Roche doesn’t feel safe walking the halls of her apartment building without a knife to protect her.
This is because a day after one of her neighbours was accused of arming himself with knives and lunging at her and her boyfriend, he was released on bail and let back in his apartment just down the hall.
It was about 6 a.m. on Thursday. The 29-year-old mother of two was getting ready for classes at Sheridan College, where she is studying to become a paralegal.
Roche heard a man in the hallway outside her ninth-floor Brampton apartment, she recalled Saturday.
The rent-geared-to-income building near Ray Lawson Blvd. and Hurontario St. is home to several women who, like Roche, fled abusive relationships.
The man was yelling that he needed an ambulance and so, trained as she was in first aid, Roche opened her door.
“It was almost as if he saw red,” Roche said of the man, whom she claimed was a known drug user and who lives with his girlfriend down the hall. “He tried to force himself into my apartment. I had to use all my strength to close the door and lock it.”
Loud thumps that likely resulted in the fresh scratches on her door awoke her boyfriend, she said.
When he opened the door, the man was allegedly crouched down, out of view from the peephole, holding two large kitchen knives.
“My boyfriend had to jump out of the way,” Roche said, recalling how he used the door as a shield.
As Roche spoke with a 911 dispatcher, she saw the man through her peephole holding two knives and a phone, saying he was “wearing a wire,” that he was “Const. Bruce Paterson” and that “they’re out to get him,” she said.
Police found the man armed with “two large kitchen knives,” Peel Regional Police Const. J.P. Valade said. “He refused to comply with the officer’s demands and he was holding the knives in a threatening manner.”
Police used a Taser to subdue the man, who was taken to a local hospital “where he was medically cleared” before being brought to the police station. The man, identified as Bruce Paterson but who is not a police officer, was held pending his Friday morning bail hearing on a charge of possessing a weapon, Valade said.
Roche, whose fear reduced her to tears, said police told her she would “get a call if he was going to be released.
“I got no call,” she said.
When she returned from classes late Friday morning, she saw 51-year-old Paterson getting on the elevator. He had been released on bail and allowed to return to his apartment, right down the hall from Roche.
His bail conditions? That he notify police of any change of address or employment and that he not possess any non-prescription drugs, weapons, firearms or firearm certificates.
There was no stipulation that he stay away from the apartment building or Roche, a Crown witness.
“I moved to this building to no longer live in fear and I can’t live in fear again,” Roche said, recalling the physical abuse she fled eight years ago.
She said she fears for the safety of her one-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son, who frequents the stairwell where Roche saw Paterson rocking back and forth while mumbling to himself days before the knife incident.
“I keep on thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t able to shut the door?’” she said. “What if he just came inside and just went crazy and started slaughtering all of us?”
“It was like a slap on the hand,” said friend and building resident Marla Valentini, 54. “In this particular case, the legal system just fell. It has slid right through, not even thinking of the potential impact.”