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Dudley George
Probe to release Ipperwash
tape
Public will definitely hear it, commission lawyer says
Counsel
for slain activist's family can't discuss recording
PETER EDWARDS, STAFF REPORTER,
Toronto Star, Sep. 9, 2004
FOREST-Contents of what a lawyer
calls an "explosive" previously secret tape-recorded
conversation on the shooting death of native activist Anthony
(Dudley) George will be made public, but not this week, a public
inquiry heard yesterday.
Commission lawyer Derry Millar
said the public will definitely hear the tape, which Andrew Orkin,
a lawyer for the George family, described at a press conference
last week as "explosive" and "high-level,"
and which he said "fundamentally explains" why an officer
with the Ontario Provincial Police shot and killed the unarmed
protester.
"The evidence will be
introduced at the appropriate time, but it will be later on in
the proceedings," Millar said in an interview.
However, Millar declined to
speculate on just when the taped conversation on the Sept. 6,
1995, shooting at Ipperwash Provincial Park will be made public,
saying that no lawyers at the inquiry have yet filed a formal
application for its release.
Orkin and fellow George family
lawyer Murray Klippenstein say they are barred from saying who
was recorded - or what was said - because of inquiry confidentiality
rules.
Tapes were provided to all
17 sets of lawyers at the inquiry on Aug. 31, Millar said.
Orkin said yesterday that a
motion for the early release of the tape is being prepared, but
that lawyers for the George family did not want to disrupt the
schedule of the inquiry this week, which includes testimony by
a historian, native elder Clifford George and an investigator
for Ontario's police watchdog organization, the civilian Special
Investigations Unit.
"There is scheduled business
for the commission this week that we do not plan to interrupt,"
Orkin said.
Millar told the inquiry yesterday
that Mr. Justice Sidney Linden will rule when the tape will be
made public at the inquiry.
George, 38, was shot dead by
an OPP tactical unit officer in September, 1995, when police
marched on a group of native protesters occupying Ipperwash Provincial
Park on Lake Huron. The protesters said they were protecting
sacred burial grounds.
The inquiry heard several testy
exchanges yesterday between Joan Holmes, an expert witness on
the history of the area, and Peter Downard, a lawyer representing
former Ontario premier Mike Harris.
Downard pressed the historian
about a document from August, 1937, in which an Ontario government
engineer refers to a burial site inside the park.
He asked Holmes if she was
certain that the human remains were found inside the provincial
park, or if they might have been outside its boundaries.
"He (the provincial engineer)
must be working in the park, because why would the provincial
government be paying him to work outside the park?" Holmes
replied.
Warned
about OPP unit, elder tells inquiry
`Watch it Cliff, these people are coming'
Ipperwash shooting probe told of native
fears
PETER EDWARDS, Toronto Star
STAFF REPORTER, September 12, 2004
FOREST, Ont.-Native elder Clifford
George said he was warned by two local police officers hours
before native activist Anthony (Dudley) George was shot dead
by an Ontario Provincial Police officer that he had better beware
of a special squad of police being brought into the area.
"He said, `Watch it Cliff,
these people are coming. We're gone at six o'clock. These people
are specially trained,'" George, 84, testified at the public
inquiry before Mr. Justice Sidney Linden into the shooting of
his distant cousin at Ipperwash Provincial Park on Lake Huron
in southwestern Ontario on Sept. 6, 1995.
The late night confrontation
in which Dudley George was killed came after native protesters
occupied the park at the end of tourist season, saying it was
on a sacred burial ground.
A judge found in 1997 that
Dudley George and other natives in the confrontation had no guns
when seven police officers opened fire on them.
Clifford George testified yesterday
that he considered a team of paramilitary officers who arrived
at the park that day to be a "hit squad."
Wearing a chest full of war
medals and holding an eagle feather, a native symbol for truth,
George testified that he and his two brothers were emotionally
devastated when they returned from fighting overseas in World
War II to find their family home had been bulldozed in 1942 to
make room for a military base, and that their mother's gravesite
had been dug up to make way for a trench.
George, who was held as a prisoner
of war by the Nazis in the final months of World War II, described
himself and his brothers during their first visit to their mother's
gravesite in 1945 as, "good, hardened soldiers, crying their
eyes out."
Under questioning from commission
counsel Donald Worme, George said the return home was particularly
rough for his older brother, Kenneth, who was shell-shocked from
heavy fighting overseas.
Immediately after returning
to Canada in 1945, Kenneth George skipped a party held by his
military unit in Guelph to hitchhike to their former home at
Stoney Point, Clifford George said.
"He looked around and
found that it (the former home) was a barracks, and he couldn't
understand that," George said. "He slept in a ditch
for the rest of the night, because he didn't know where to go."
George and his two older brothers,
all of whom volunteered to fight overseas, were granted permission
to visit the graveyard, where their mother and several others
from the community were buried.
"There was trenches dug
where they were playing soldier, right in our gravesite,"
George said. "That is what made it bad for us.... I always
say, `I found all my enemies when I got home.'"
George said he tried to bring
his English war bride, whom he met while serving with an anti-aircraft
unit in Dover, on to the Kettle Point reserve. His family had
been forcibly relocated there by the Canadian government in 1942,
so that their land in Stoney Point could be used for a military
base.
The Indian agent shouted at
him that it wasn't right to bring a white woman onto a native
reserve that would likely never get electricity or indoor plumbing,
he said.
George said he received a letter
from his father while he was overseas, telling him not to worry
that his homeland at Stoney Point was taken under the War Measures
Act.
"He told me, `Never mind
son. As soon as the war is over, our property will be given back
to us,'" George testified.
He said he later heard how
his Stoney Point schoolteacher had to be forcibly moved from
Stoney Point in 1942.
"She sat on her chair
outside (her home) with a shotgun on her knees," George
testified. "... I don't think the gun was even loaded. But
that didn't stop them. They just picked her up... I think that
none of them went voluntarily. That was their home, their land.
We had the idea that the Creator put us there."
There was a heated exchange
after Mark Sandler, a lawyer for the OPP, called Clifford George
an "extraordinary gentlemen," but cautioned against
him being allowed to give hearsay evidence about violence in
the park the night Dudley George died.
"I am telling the truth,"
George replied sharply, pointing his finger at the lawyer. "...
I think I'm getting too close to the truth for you.... You people
don't want to see the truth."
George is scheduled to be back
on the witness stand when the inquiry resumes on Sept. 20.
Elder discounts gun
`rumours'
Testifies to peaceful life at Stoney Point
Denies natives
used guns and intimidation
PETER EDWARDS, Toronto Star
STAFF REPORTER, September 21, 2004
FOREST, Ont.- False news reports
about natives armed with guns frightened police and firefighters
to the point that they wouldn't set foot on the Stoney Point
reserve, an elder told the public inquiry into the death of native
activist Anthony (Dudley) George.
"There was a lot of rumours,"
Clifford George, 84, told the inquiry examining how Dudley George
ended up being shot by a member of the Ontario Provincial Police
when seven officers opened fire on an unarmed group of Stoney
Point natives during a confrontation on Sept. 6, 1995.
"There still is today,"
continued George, under questioning from Mark Sandler, a lawyer
representing the OPP. "That there were weapons in there
... There are not, sir. There never was."
George wore a poppy and a dozen
medals from World War II and the Korean War on his blue blazer,
and held an eagle feather, a native testament for truth, as he
listened to Sandler read from old news reports that suggested
the natives had guns in their community. In one from April, 1998,
another native elder was quoted as saying she was forced out
of Stoney Point after being threatened with guns.
"I'm sure that she was
asked to leave there because she was causing problems,"
George said.
He said the Stoney Point natives
made a conscious decision not to keep guns there when they occupied
the former Camp Ipperwash military base, on land that had been
taken from Indians in 1942 and never returned.
Sandler questioned George about
a local newspaper story in spring 1998, which stated that a sawed-off
.22-calibre rifle and Molotov cocktails had been found on the
base by a native peacekeeper. George said he never heard of either
being present. "I would have done something about it, sir,
immediately," said George, who held the rank of counsellor
and elder.
George said a mentally disturbed
woman who was asked to leave the camp set fire to a building
there sometime after September, 1995, and that no firefighters
from outlying communities would help fight the blaze.
- "That's the time the
fire departments would not come anywhere near it, even though
they were called," George said.
Firearms photos draw fire
- A lawyer for Dudley
George's family says they are 'bogus.'
JOHN MINER, London Free
Press Reporter, September 22, 2004
FOREST -- A lawyer for Dudley
George's family accused the OPP and a group representing its
rank and file members of stooping to a new low after photos of
seized firearms were introduced at the Ipperwash inquiry yesterday.
"It is absolutely bogus," charged lawyer Andrew Orkin.
He said the firearms in the
pictures weren't found at the Stoney Point native reserve, but
in another community.
He said it was extraordinary
police would now bring forth objects never introduced when an
OPP officer went on trial for the fatal 1995 shooting of George,
a native protester.
"It is simply a blatant
effort once again to bring up a smokescreen and blow smoke in
the face of the public at the start of this process."
The photos -- one of a .22-calibre
rifle, the other of a sawed-off shotgun with the words "bastard
blaster" written on the side -- were shown in cross-examination
of native witness Clifford George.
Ian Rolland, lawyer for the
Ontario Provincial Police Association, said evidence will be
introduced later showing the weapons were turned over to the
OPP Sept. 8, 1995, two days after Dudley George was shot by a
police sniper in a confrontation at Ipperwash Provincial Park.
Rolland also introduced a blurry
police surveillance photo taken in a building on the Stoney Point
reserve in the early morning hours of Sept. 6, 1995, the day
George was shot.
The photo showed a man with
a ponytail walking with an object in his left hand.
Rolland asked Clifford George
if the man in the picture was Dudley George and if he was carrying
a firearm.
The native elder replied he
couldn't tell from the poor-quality photo if the man was carrying
a stick or a gun.
Nor could Clifford George identify
the person pictured.
Rolland suggested the object
was being carried in the way a person would carry a gun.
"I would carry my stick
that way sometimes," George replied.
The 84-year-old was also questioned
yesterday for hours about statements given by soldiers at Camp
Ipperwash, an army camp, that gunshots were frequently heard
from the area occupied by the natives.
Some soldiers said they'd observed
Dudley George with a rifle and he had panned their position before
firing into the bush. Another reported George would sit on his
porch and shoot at deer in a field on the other side of Highway
21.
Clifford George said he never
saw Dudley George or any other natives at the army camp with
a firearm. He asked why the incidents hadn't been reported to
authorities at the reserve and why the soldiers' reports focused
on Dudley George when there were many others at the camp.
"There was a lot of gall
darn discrimination against us, trying to pin things on us,"
George testified.
He also said he never heard
gunshots in the night that soldiers had reported.
"In that period 1993 to
1995, how was your hearing?" asked Rolland.
"Very good, sir,"
George replied.
George also disputed statements
by soldiers that Dudley George had crashed a car into a military
vehicle. He said he'd never known him to drive.
Asked by Rolland to explain
why a soldier would record observations about Dudley George firing
guns, George said: "I hate to call anyone a liar, but I
think he is lying like the rest of them."
Outside the hearing room, Orkin
said it appeared to him the man in the police surveillance photo
was carrying a flashlight.
"I suppose it is expectable
that nine years on, with no explanation of not having found any
weapons of mass destruction at Stoney Point, the OPP and the
OPPA will now be coming up with photographs of a man walking
in the darkness with a mag flashlight, saying he is carrying
a gun.
"This is stooping pretty
low and really scraping the bottom of the barrel."
Challenged in the hearing for
introducing "inflammatory" material, Rolland said he
was only trying to be fair to the witness, allowing him to respond
to evidence that will be heard later that will contradict his
testimony.
Meanwhile, a mystery tape that
has been described as "explosive" could be made public
as early as next week at the inquiry.
There also were hints yesterday
there is similar evidence still being kept under wraps.
Bill Horton, lawyer for the
Chiefs of Ontario, said he will ask the commission Monday to
release the tape to the public during a closed session.
"I think it is very important
evidence. I think as we go along there is other evidence in the
same category," he told reporters.
The inquiry was also shown
an October 1989 CBC Fifth Estate program that exposed the "marriage
patch" at the army camp, an exclusive beach area families
of soldiers described as a "military Club Med."
A vacationing soldier interviewed
on the television program about how he felt about the land being
seized from the natives replied: "Too bad. A deal is a deal."
The "marriage patch"
was shut down after the program aired.
Copyright © The London
Free Press 2001,2002,2003
Elder discounts gun `rumours'
Testifies to peaceful life at Stoney Point
Denies natives
used guns and intimidation
PETER EDWARDS, STAFF REPORTER,
Toronto Star, Sep. 21, 2004.
FOREST, Ont.- False news reports
about natives armed with guns frightened police and firefighters
to the point that they wouldn't set foot on the Stoney Point
reserve, an elder told the public inquiry into the death of native
activist Anthony (Dudley) George.
"There was a lot of rumours,"
Clifford George, 84, told the inquiry examining how Dudley George
ended up being shot by a member of the Ontario Provincial Police
when seven officers opened fire on an unarmed group of Stoney
Point natives during a confrontation on Sept. 6, 1995.
"There still is today,"
continued George, under questioning from Mark Sandler, a lawyer
representing the OPP. "That there were weapons in there
... There are not, sir. There never was."
George wore a poppy and a dozen
medals from World War II and the Korean War on his blue blazer,
and held an eagle feather, a native testament for truth, as he
listened to Sandler read from old news reports that suggested
the natives had guns in their community. In one from April, 1998,
another native elder was quoted as saying she was forced out
of Stoney Point after being threatened with guns.
"I'm sure that she was
asked to leave there because she was causing problems,"
George said.
He said the Stoney Point natives
made a conscious decision not to keep guns there when they occupied
the former Camp Ipperwash military base, on land that had been
taken from Indians in 1942 and never returned.
Sandler questioned George about
a local newspaper story in spring 1998, which stated that a sawed-off
.22-calibre rifle and Molotov cocktails had been found on the
base by a native peacekeeper. George said he never heard of either
being present. "I would have done something about it, sir,
immediately," said George, who held the rank of counsellor
and elder.
George said a mentally disturbed
woman who was asked to leave the camp set fire to a building
there sometime after September, 1995, and that no firefighters
from outlying communities would help fight the blaze.
"That's the time the fire
departments would not come anywhere near it, even though they
were called," George said.
Inquiry told of Harris
remark
Comment allegedly made before shooting
Ex-premier's
lawyer attacks testimony
PETER EDWARDS, Toronto Star
STAFF REPORTER, Sep. 23, 2004
FOREST, Ont. -Hours before
police shot and killed a native activist at Ipperwash Provincial
Park, a local chief was told in a phone call that then-premier
Mike Harris informed a meeting, "I don't care what it takes.
Get those f---ing Indians out of the park," a witness told
a public inquiry yesterday.
Bonnie Bressette, 67, testified
yesterday that Chief Tom Bressette, of the Kettle and Stony Point
band, told her of the call hours after the fatal shooting of
Anthony (Dudley) George on the night of Sept. 6, 1995.
"He (Bressette) said,
`I got this telephone call,'" she told the Ipperwash inquiry.
"He didn't tell me who called him." The chief was clearly
disturbed by the call that reported Harris' comments, she said.
Harris' lawyer, Bill Hourigan,
objected to questioning about the telephone call, but Mr. Justice
Sidney Linden, who's presiding over the inquiry, said the rules
of evidence in a public inquiry are more relaxed than at a trial.
The chief is expected to testify
later in the inquiry.
Harris has continually said
there was no political involvement in the police operation, in
which seven Ontario Provincial Police officers opened fire on
the natives. A judge later found that all of the native people
were unarmed that night.
While he permitted the questioning,
Linden also cautioned that the account of the phone call was
not proven evidence and it will be probed later on.
In an interview outside the
inquiry, Hourigan described the account of the phone call as
"second- or third- or fourth-hand."
"It's a basic evidentiary
tenet that you need to hear evidence from witnesses who are in
a position to testify from first-hand experience," he said.
But lawyer Andrew Orkin, who
represents some members of the George family, said in an interview
that evidence introduced by the Ontario Provincial Police Association
claiming the natives had guns was also hearsay.
He added that the questioning
was appropriate, since the OPP operation at the park the night
George was killed raises questions about political pressure from
high levels of government.
In earlier testimony, Bressette
said George told her that OPP officers threatened him and warned
that he would "be the first to get it," hours before
he was shot dead by a police tactical unit officer.
Bressette testified that when
they talked at the park on Sept. 6, George just laughed when
she asked him if he was afraid for his life.
George, 38, was shot dead after
police marched on a group of two-dozen unarmed aboriginal protesters
occupying the park on Lake Huron.
Racism rears head at
Ipperwash inquiry
Canadian Press, Sep 24,
2004
FOREST, ONT. -- The Ipperwash
judicial inquiry took an unsettling turn yesterday after members
of Dudley George's family found a metre-long swastika spray-painted
at their usual parking spots.
Under the Nazi symbol, "4
ever" was painted on the asphalt parking lot at the Forest
Community Centre.
Several lawyers at the inquiry
into Mr. George's death are Jewish, as is Mr. Justice Sidney
Linden, the inquiry commissioner.
Provincial police are investigating.
Sam George, a brother of the
dead man, found the swastika after he parked.
"It is too bad people
can't get rid of this kind of stuff and move forward," he
said.
"It is the type of symbol
you see when there is hatred toward other people, and to see
it here this morning is just not good."
Mr. George said he hoped the
inquiry would promote healing in the community after the events
at Ipperwash Provincial Park nine years ago, when his brother
was shot and killed by a provincial police officer.
The swastika showed there is
still a long way to go, he said.
The incident comes just days
after a member of a road-paving crew working on the street in
front of the community centre yelled "get a job" at
a native woman crossing the street.
The incident was witnessed
by reporters and several natives.
The road worker has reportedly
been suspended from her job.
Andrew Orkin, a lawyer for
the George family, said it appeared the swastika was the work
of someone local, but doesn't reflect feelings in the community.
"Our sense is this is
certainly not representative of dominant local thinking, either
in Forest or Bosanquet, or in Southwestern Ontario," he
said.
But Mr. Orkin said it would
be an opportune time for local religious and community leaders
to condemn the action.
"Let's do so promptly
and in very strong terms."
Mr. Orkin said there was a
terrible irony the graffiti was done the day after the testimony
of Clifford George, a decorated war veteran who fought the Nazis
in Europe during the Second World War.
Inside the hall, Marcia Simon,
a resident of Stoney Point, Ont., described in detail how armed
police officers allegedly threatened her the night Mr. George
was shot.
Ms. Simon, 57, has a degree
in social science and helped write the native-language program
used in Ontario schools. She was a high-school teacher in London,
Ont., and had a home on the reserve.
She testified that she was
headed for the confrontation scene to find her son around 11
p.m. when police with lights and loudspeakers ordered her away.
Aware some of her people were
shot and injured, and fearing her son was among them, Ms. Simon
testified she left with her mother, Melva George, to call for
an ambulance.
She said that halfway to Northville,
Ont., their vehicle was intercepted on Highway 21 by two OPP
cruisers with flashing lights. Ms. Simon, who had already ordered
her mother down and out of sight, kept driving.
"I was fearful they wanted
to stop and shoot me," she told the inquiry, fighting back
tears.
At Northville she dialled an
operator from the payphone. She then told inquiry members that
several officers approached with guns levelled and order her
away from the phone. In the car, her mother was screaming, she
said.
Swastika painted outside
inquiry
Brother of slain native spots Nazi graffiti
`There's
a terrible irony here,' lawyer says
PETER EDWARDS, Toronto Star
STAFF REPORTER, Sep. 24, 2004
FOREST - Sam George parked
his truck yesterday in his regular spot outside the inquiry into
the shooting death of his brother, native activist Anthony (Dudley)
George, and stepped out to see freshly painted Nazi graffiti
on the pavement.
He appeared saddened as he
stared at a metre-long swastika, with "4 ever" painted
in black underneath, in the corner of the parking lot at the
local hockey arena, where Mr. Justice Sidney Linden has been
conducting the inquiry since July.
"It's sad to see something
like this," George said. "It's just too bad people
can't get rid of this kind of stuff and go forward."
George family lawyer Andrew
Orkin called upon faith leaders in this southwestern Ontario
community near Sarnia to denounce this type of hatred.
"Our sentiment is that
this is certainly not representative of the dominant local feeling,"
Orkin said.
He noted that the graffiti
was painted just days after George's cousin Clifford, 84, testified
about encountering racism in Canada after fighting overseas against
the Nazis in World War II.
"There's a terrible irony
here," Orkin said.
Clifford George, who was held
by the Nazis as a prisoner of war, said he doubts that those
behind the graffiti understand what it means.
"They don't know what
a swastika is," Clifford George said. "There's all
kinds of sick people in this world ... There has always been
discrimination."
Linden is probing the shooting
death of Dudley George on Sept. 6, 1995, when seven Ontario Provincial
Police officers opened fire on unarmed native protesters at Ipperwash
Provincial Park. That same night, another native man was beaten
until his heart stopped, but he was later revived.
The judge's mandate includes
drafting suggestions for avoiding similar violence in the future.
An OPP officer yesterday photographed
the graffiti before arena staff painted it over in black.
The swastika was painted in
a spot where the George family often parks a borrowed mobile
home, which they have nicknamed the Truthmobile.
Also yesterday, the inquiry
heard a tape-recording of Dudley George's cousin, Marcia Simon,
58, as she was being arrested at gunpoint by OPP officers. At
the time, she was trying to call for an ambulance from a phone
booth in the nearby village of Northville immediately after the
shooting.
An officer could be heard shouting,
"Don't make a move, lady," and Simon responding, "I'm
just talking on the phone. Get the gun out of here."
Simon and at least a half-dozen
people in the inquiry room - including one lawyer - cried as
she told how she was terrified that her son Kevin might have
also been fatally shot and horrified that officers might shoot
her elderly mother, Melva, when they trained shotguns on her
and ordered her to raise her arms.
"She was pleading that
she couldn't - that she had arthritis," Simon recalled.
"I thought they were going to blow her away.
"I asked them if that's
how they were trained to treat old, grey-haired widows, and they
seemed to calm down," Simon continued. "They couldn't
answer that question."
Simon, who at the time was
a high-school teacher in nearby London, said she was held in
custody that night but never given a reason for the arrest.
The recording did not include
an earlier call Simon made from the phone booth, when she pleaded
with the operator to send an ambulance to the park the night
of the shooting.
"She (the operator) says,
`I think you need to be in touch with the police,'" Simon
testified. "I told her that it was the police that were
going to shoot me."
On average each day, about
three-dozen spectators have attended the inquiry, held in a hockey
rink where Dudley George once played hockey as a peewee goalie.
Members of the nearby Kettle
and Stony Point bands comprise most of the public watching the
proceedings.
George, 38, was killed after
police riot-squad officers marched on a group of two-dozen unarmed
aboriginal protesters occupying the park, on Lake Huron. The
protesters occupied the park after it closed on the Labour Day
weekend of 1995, saying they were protecting native burial grounds.
The inquiry continues Monday.
Teacher testifies she
feared for life
JOHN MINER, London Free
Press Reporter, 2004-09-24 02:13:17
FOREST -- A former London teacher
testified yesterday she feared she would be executed by police
as she made a desperate call to a 911 operator about the clash
between police and native protesters at Ipperwash Provincial
Park in 1995. "I was determined to try and at least make
a last-ditch effort to have someone alerted that there was a
cry for help there," Marcia Simon testified at the inquiry
into the killing of native protester Dudley George in September
Simon, who taught at Beal secondary
school and lived at the Stoney Point Reserve, said she was told
by one of her sons that night that police had "shot up everything"
at the nearby park. Fearing her other son, who had been at the
park, was lying somewhere dying, Simon said she knew she had
to get help.
She took her mother and they
drove the four kilometres to a pay phone at the hamlet of Northville
to call for ambulances. Half-way there, she could see police
vehicles with their flashers on approaching from behind. She
decided to keep going until she made it to the pay phone.
"I was fearful they wanted
to stop me and shoot me as well because there was no reason to
stop me," she testified.
She made it to the pay telephone,
dialled and told the operator she needed an ambulance. By then,
OPP officers with shotguns levelled at her head had closed in.
On the tape of the 911 call
played yesterday at the inquiry, a voice could be heard in the
background yelling, "Don't make a move, lady" as Simon
asked for an ambulance.
Simon stayed on the phone despite
the warning.
She testified she couldn't
believe police had shotguns levelled at her as she called for
help, but then remembered what had happened at Tiananmen Square
in China where civilians were slaughtered by the military.
"I turned my back to them
and offered them the back of my head. If they were going to shoot
me, do it in the back of my head," Simon testified as several
men and women in the audience wiped tears from their eyes. One
lawyer wept.
She said the phone was jerked
from her.
"I remembered meeting
the hood of my car and the ground. And I could hear my mother
yelling in the background. She was trying to tell them about
the bone graft I had just had, that it was healing, and they
paid no attention."
Simon said her glasses were
knocked from her and left in the parking lot. She was then handcuffed.
She testified she became aware
her mother was on the ground trying to pray.
"They had shotguns levelled
right at her head, yelling at her to put her hands in the air,
and she was pleading that she couldn't because she had arthritis.
"I thought they were going
to blow her away and I pleaded with them."
Simon said she told police
to leave her mother alone, that she didn't do anything wrong.
"I asked them if that's
how they were trained to treat old, grey-haired widows, and they
seemed to calm down a little. They couldn't answer that question."
Police decided to arrest her,
but promised to take her mother home, she testified.
Simon said she was taken to
Forest and put in a police cell. The next morning, she said police
told her they would release her and she was put in a cruiser
with two officers, who drove on back roads.
"I was really fearful
for my life," she said.
Eventually, she was taken to
her mother's home.
Simon said the events have
had a lasting effect on her and for years she was terrified of
driving into Forest.
The inquiry resumes Monday
with her cross- examination.
Copyright © The London
Free Press 2001,2002,2003
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.