NEWS photo Terry Peters

PROVINCIAL motor vehiclo inspector Rob McDermid points to a dangerously bald taxi tire — It was so worn stee! wires were pok-
tng out. The Motor Vehicle Branch ts inspecting North Shore taxis this week as part of a crackdown on unsafe cabs. So far 36% of
Lower Mainiand cabs have failed safety checks. This taxi, checked at a North Van ICBC centre, had to be pulled off the road.

Jolanda Waskito
Contributing Writer’

fety faces scrut

Lower Mainland failure

ny

in the Lower Mainland yet to be inspected.
It will take about five days to check the North
Shore's 127 cabs.

‘THE Transportation Ministry. is crack-
~ ing down on cabs on the North Shore. :

Motor vehicle inspector Jay Northcott checked
about 24 taxis Wednesday: At least one had to be
towed away. ‘ ;

“This wheel is about to come fiying off this
taxi,” Northcott said as he jiggled a hoisted cab’s
front tire in a North Vancouver ICBC claim cen-
tre.

He pointed to the other front tire: it was bald
“and steel wires were poking out. :
“These are the steel cords of the body of this

rate high; North Shore
cabs are being checked

tire — it’s worn to the point the steel is sticking
out,” Northcott said. “We have a possibility of a
really serious accident right here.”

Since March 10, the Transportation Ministry
has checked 693 taxi cabs throughout the Lower
Mainland. Of those, 442 passed inspection; 251

ed. .

So far, that’s a 36% failure rate. And that’s only
the half of it. There are about 700 more taxi cabs

According to ministry spokeswoman Betty
Nicholson, the three most frequent problems
found with taxis have been improper installation
of natural B and propane conversions, poor
brakes and faulty steering.

Since taxis have mandatory, twice-yearly
inspections at designated facilities, the recent min-
istry-conducted checks also act as an audit.

“These places have passed (taxis) under min-
istry standard checks,” Nicholson said.

“We want.to go to these facilities to see why
taxis aré being passed when they shouldn’r have
been.”

on suffered serious bra

From page 1

punched me in the face.”

Roxburgh said she and Caouette
talked about separation as early as

* 1991 but that he would react with

mental and physical abuse. -

~Itlis. the Crown’s theory that
Caouette struck at the children in an
act of vengeful malic: against
Roxburgh. —

“His reactions were different,”
she said of the separation talks.

: “Sometimes he’ would talk about
it and then retaliate later in a violent
_ or aggressive way, and sometimes he

would retaliate nght away.”

She added: “The marriage as far
as I was concerned was over... I
couldn’t live in that situation any-
more.”

The witness said Caouette once
hit her on the back of the head as she
lay asleep on Danielle's bed.

“I don’t want to’ live with you
anymore,” she told him: :

Then “he grabbed me by the
neck and pushed me backwards over
the couch,” she said.

On another occasion, she testi-
fied, Caouette forced her to have sex
against her will. .

“He pushed me face down, with

;. his hand on the back of my head and

* proceeded to have sex with me.”

.. The witness recalled one spring

day in 1993 that left her particularly

shaken.

“I had just come home from
work and he went after me ...,” she
said. “He picked up a can of frozen
juice that had been defrosted and
threw it in my face.”

Roxburgh admitted to seeing
other men while married but only
“when the violence was at its worst.”

In tears, she said: “I was so tor-
mented and depressed ...”

When Caouette learned of the
affairs, he began threatening her, she
told the jury and Mr. Justice Allan
Thackray.

One day in February 1995,
Caouette paced in and out of a room
in which Roxburgh was sitting and
allegedly told her: “If I ever catch
yous and him together, I will kill you

oth.”

Asked by prosecutor Joc Bellows
why she had not reported these inci-
dents to police, Roxburgh said she
hoped “things might stop.”

The couple married in 1979, sep-
arated in April 1995 and were
divorced in September the following
year.

Roxburgh said she has been in a
relationship since March 1995 and
that her boyfriend, currently unem-
ployed, helps her to look after her
son, who is now 15.

Events came to a head on May 6,
1995, the court heard.

That evening, an upset and “irra-

tional” Caouette telephoned
Roxburgh and talked about getting
his family back.

“He indicated that perhaps I was
next and he said, ‘I don’t care if I go
to jail; the kids don’t like me any-
way.’”

Police were called.

A North Vancouver Mountie was
at Roxburgh’s apartinent when
Caouette arrived at her patio doors
and began berating her.

“He said, ‘Is this what you want
them to do to me, manhandic me?”
she quoted him as saying. —_-

© was arrested and later charged
with uttering a death threat against
his wife.

On Tuesday, the jury got a ciuse
look at what prosecutors contend is
the axe used to attack the children.

Joshua, who was 14 at the time,
suffered serious brain damage.
Danielle, who was attacked on her
10th birthday, died a week later.

Both had been bashed about the
head.

North Vancouver RCMP Const.
Doug Haney, who found the rough-
ly 19-inch-long wood-handled axe
under some bedding in the room
where the children were assaulted,
showed it to the seven-woman, four-

man jury.

There were gasps from the
packed public gallery as it was
removed from an evidence bag.

n injur V

A surveillance video tape taken
July 6, 1995, at a Lumberland outlet
in North Vancouver was also shown.

In it, a man resembling Caouette
is seen shopping for an axe and other
hardware.

A cashier identified Caouette as
the man who bought an axe that day.

Three hooks were found in
Caouette’s suite that the Crown
alleges he was planning to use in a
suicide attempt.

Const. Glenn Stefureak testified
that he found the hooks screwed 4
couple of inches apart in the bed-
room ceiling.

He also found a bag containing
more hooks, tools, an ice-pick, a pair
of vice-grips, a hammer and razor
blades. A length of rope about five
feet long with a “noose-type” slip-
knot was on the floor. ;

The hooks were bent to an
almost closed position, he said,
adding they took considerable effort
to reniove.

The officer said he interviewed
Caouette at the North Vancouver
detachment on the afternoon of the
attack and found him to be
absolutely sober a He was later
photographed and fingerprinted.

Caouette was bors in Farnham,
Quebec, and was working as a sales-
man at Tip Top Tailers, court heard.

The defence expects to begin its
case Monday.

Pot sale
to teens
nets fine

By Jolanda Waskito
Contributing Writer

A B.C. provincial court
slapped a 23-year-old
North Vancouver man
with a $1,000 fine
Tuesday for selling mari-
juana to teenagers.

Crown prosecutor Jay Straith
had asked for a stiffer penalty of
six months in jail. ;

Instead Tom Ridgewell was
ordered to pay the fine by Judge
Reginald Grandison in a North
Vancouver court.

Ridgewell was also sentenced
to three days in jail for failing to
appear in court in April 1996.

Then 21, Ridgewell sold 25
one-gram bags of pot to 14- and
15-year-olds at the Brunswick
Bowling Lancs in West
Vancouver on Sept. 15, 1995.

West Vancouver Police offi-
cers witnessed the transaction
and arrested Ridgewell, who was
on probation at the time.

¢ drug-trafficking convic-
tion is not Ridgewell’s first
offence. He was previously con-
victed of theft under $1,000 and
mischief.

Spat

Turn your clocks ahead
one hour at
2 a.m. on April 6

sy

a Car Care.
wm Crosswerd....

: it inquiring Reporte
| #3 Insights...

 @ Lauiens..

| gn Mailbo

| a Mitcheti..

i Neighborhoods.

| ay North Shore Alert.

@ North Shore This Week.....15

| we Real Estate... 64

Norte Shore News, founded in 1969 as an inde-
pendent subutban newspaper end qualitied under
Schedule 111, Paragraph UL1 of the Excise Tax
Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and
Sunday by North Shore Free Press Ltd. and distrib-
uted to every door on the North Shore. Canada Post
Canadian Publications” Mail Sales Product
Agreement No. 0087238, Mailing rates svailable