When I wrote about the “screaming Christian” and how his loud religious statements had raised the ire of residents near Burnaby’s Metrotown SkyTrain station (you can read the original column here), plenty of people wrote in with their thoughts.
Most were fed up with hearing what they viewed as offensive statements on a near-daily basis.
Some tried to help me identify him. A few actually defended him, saying he was “harmless.”
Ros is not one of those people.
Ros (I’m protecting her identity here) contacted me to say that the “screaming Christian” – the name given by one fed-up area resident – was once convicted of assault for spitting in her face.
Yes, spitting in her face.
I tracked down the court file and it’s true (I’m not using his name either in order to protect her identity). The person in question – Ros identified him from photos outside of Metrotown station - was convicted of assault in 2013 in B.C. Supreme Court.
The court documents say he was “street preaching” in Vancouver when Ros told him that she found his sign “offensive” and an “altercation occurred” in which the man spit in her face.
She called police and he was charged and then convicted, although he was acquitted on a second charge.
The man “did not deny spitting in (the victim’s) face or that he had intended to do so, but said he did so out of self-defence,” read a court statement of facts.
The judge noted that the man “could simply have walked away and was not in any danger of bodily harm. His use of force had been out of proportion to the situation.”
Yeah, just slightly.
The man received an absolute discharge, but amazingly he appealed the conviction all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada before it was dismissed. He represented himself in court.
“In short, the screaming Christian is a nasty individual,” said Ros.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
