Thank you Tully!

Good Day Readers:

We received the following e-mail today from no-reply@leduc rep.com:

Hi Clare,

Tully thought you may be interested in this!

Click the Link below to view the content http://www.leducrep.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2487689. You can check out the website at http://www.leducrep.com. Keeping in touch with your community has never been so easy! Leduc Representative Team.

With a no-reply e-mail address we're unable to contact the person(s) to thank them so we'll do it this way.

By way of background, we presume "Tully" is Tully Vorcheux who suffice it to say is no fan of Wetaskiwin, Alberta Crown Procecutor Lionel Chartrand the pro bono General Legal Counsel for CyberSmokeSignals who:

(i) conceived
(ii) authored
(iii) sanctioned publication
(iv) did not at any time advise it might contain defamatory material
(v) asked not to be identified as its author
(vi) at no time subsequently requested it be removed from the internet

a petition in January of 2004 calling for reform of election campaign funding which the Manitoba Metis Federation's taxpayer financed, prolific, production line defamation lawyer Murray Trachtenberg (www.ptlaw.mb.ca; mtrachtenberg@ptlaw.mb.ca) is now prosecuting. Mr. Chartrand was never named as a Co-Defendant possibly because he was in a serious conflict of interest position with the MMF at the time the Statement of Claim was filed (March 2005).

In July 2008 Lionel Chartrand left his job with Manitoba Legal Aid to become a Crown and has not maintained his licence to practice here. He can be contacted at lionel.chartrand@gov.ab.ca.
Sincerely,

Clare L. Pieuk

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Crack binge led to Prairie Professional fire
Posted By Alexandra Pope
Posted 3 days ago

A three-day crack cocaine binge sparked a chain of events that led to the fire that destroyed the Prairie Professional Centre in Leduc last summer, leaving 36 people homeless and causing $6 million worth of damage.

Three hours into a preliminary inquiry on the fire at Leduc provincial court March 8, 23-year-old Cheryl Brozny pleaded guilty to arson with disregard for human life.

Brozny, whose face and neck were disfigured by burns in the June 12 fire, stared at the witness box and occasionally nodded as she listened to her ex-girlfriend Angela Pelchat describe how the pair smoked $1,500 worth of crack cocaine in their shared third-floor apartment in the days before the fire.

The couple had gone on drug binges before, but by the third day, Pelchat said, she'd had enough.

"I had missed a couple of days of work and I was starting to get fed up," she said. "I just didn't want to be in that situation anymore. There was always drugs … and it was always too much, paychecks gone and stuff."

When Brozny went out to buy more drugs early in the afternoon on June 12, Pelchat called a coworker to come pick her up.

When Brozny returned home, Pelchat told her the relationship was over and climbed into her coworker's car.

Brozny also got into the car to continue the argument, at which point Pelchat's coworker called police.

Constable Christina Fenc with Leduc RCMP broke up the fight and the women went their separate ways — Pelchat to a relative's house in Sherwood Park, and Brozny back to the apartment.

Two hours later, Fenc was back at the building, this time watching it burn.

Fenc told court when she arrived on scene just after four o'clock, the northeast corner of the building was already on fire. A resident pointed out a badly-burned woman, whom Fenc recognized as Brozny, crouched on the second-floor roof at the west end of the building.

"She was burned, hysterical," Fenc said.

Fenc and three other RCMP members helped Brozny out of the building and into a waiting ambulance. At that point, Fenc said, Brozny admitted to starting the fire.

"As I was walking her to the stretcher, she said, 'I did it, I was smoking crack,'" she recalled.

Surveillance tapes from the Prairie Professional Centre showed Brozny leaving the building with a red jerry can shortly after fighting with Pelchat, and returning a few minutes later with the same can. Receipts obtained by police showed Brozny had purchased gasoline at a convenience store on Corinthia Drive.

Crown prosecutor Lionel Chartrand said fire investigators smelled gasoline in the apartment unit after the fire and found evidence of a large amount of a flammable substance on an area rug. Samples were sent for testing, but the results were not returned in time for the inquiry.
(emphasis ours)

Chartrand said Brozny told police she had purchased the gasoline for her mother, who was coming to pick her up, and had spilled some on the rug and on her clothing. (empahsis ours)

Brozny later told paramedics she had accidentally ignited the gasoline on her clothing while lighting her crack pipe.

"The fact is due to her drug-induced state, lack of memory and no videotape of exactly what she did, it'll never be known," Chartrand said. (empahsis ours)

Pelchat said she had no reason to believe Brozny was dangerous and was surprised to learn of the fire the following day.

"Whenever we had a fight I was always worried she was going to do something irrational, but I thought she'd pawn the TVs or something," Pelchat said.

"After the fight she was … very upset, but I didn't see anything that would cause me alarm."

Brozny will be sentenced October 7.