After turning himself over to police, a man is facing criminal charges for last week’s manure dumping outside Premier John Horgan’s constituency office in Langford.
According to RCMP Corp. Alex Bérubé, the man surrendered to West Shore RCMP on Monday, May 30th and was subsequently released on an undertaking.
Bérubé says the man was charged with mischief and has a date in court on August 18th.
“As the charge has not been sworn in court, I can’t release his name,” Bérubé told Victoria Buzz.
On Wednesday, May 25th, West Shore RCMP pleaded for public help after old-growth activists were caught on camera depositing and chucking feces at Horgan’s office earlier that morning.
Police released photos and video footage of suspects in the act, noting all five fled before officers arrived on scene around 9:30 a.m.
In a media release, Save Old Growth identified the arrestee as 71-year-old Richard Demontigny, saying he waited outside Horgan’s office to speak with him before heading to the RCMP detachment, but had no luck.
“We need to protect our old-growth forests,” Demontigny said before turning himself in. “And I am going to ask the premier to take responsibility for doing that. He promised to do that; he knows that it’s worth more standing.”
In April, the province of BC said it was working with First Nations to defer logging of old-growth and develop a new approach to sustainable forest management.
“Deferrals have been implemented on nearly 1.7 million hectares of old-growth, including approximately 1.05 million hectares of BC’s forests most at risk of irreversible loss,” the government said.
