Andrew Reynolds, owner of Trend Diesel and the 65-foot tugboat Trend D Foam, was at Nanaimo’s Cameron Island Marina along with an employee, cleaning up extensive damage to the boat’s interior the day after a man broke in.
The men wore respirators as they worked to counter the lingering effects of tear-gas, left from an RCMP Emergency Response Team stand-off on Feb. 1, where the man was arrested.
“It was [the] end of the day. I was cleaning up and I had my I.T. guy onboard trying to collect more video footage … We were down there collecting that data and at the same time I’m trying to board up the broken windows and kind of prepare for the night to lock things down and tidying up, just so we’re not tracking glass around everywhere,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds happened to glance up at the boardwalk around Cameron Island, which overlooks the marina, to see what looked like the man who broke into his boat and had just been released following his court appearance, “standing at the rail staring me down” from the walkway overlooking the marina.
“Was he looking to see if anyone was there so he could try and come back?” Reynolds said. “You know, his cellphone was left onboard when he was removed from the vessel. He had some other personal belongings that were left behind; a back pack, a jacket, a hoodie, shoes.”
Unnerved, Reynolds called his employee, to look and confirm it actually was the man. He called 911 on his cellphone as the man continued to stare at him, then abruptly walked away toward Front Street.
Reynolds said he and his employee followed the man to keep track of him and relayed his whereabouts to an RCMP dispatcher. Near the Port Theatre, he doubled back, walked around Cameron Island and was walking south on Port Drive when police caught up with him. He didn’t resist when police picked him up.
“What he told the officer … was, ‘I think I need to go to the hospital’ is what the police officer told me,” Reynolds said.
On Feb. 1, a suspect had allegedly threatened store and security staff at Port Place Shopping Centre after they confronted him over allegedly unpaid merchandise. But by that time, Reynolds said, he had already been aboard the Trend D Foam for as long as 30 hours.
Reynolds said video footage recovered from the boat’s digital video recorder showed him consuming drugs and acting erratically, and even showed him leaving the boat wearing Reynolds’s red floater jacket when he left to boat to go to Port Place Shopping Centre where he alleged threatened employees.
“But nothing was really getting broken at that point,” Reynolds said. “It wasn’t until we lost the video coverage when he discovered, about 24 hours in, that the cameras were on the deck head inside.”
Reynolds said security cameras were destroyed. WiFi routers were ripped out and thrown overboard. Cooking knives were stabbed into a custom-built teak table and into seating upholstery cushion works near windows that had been smashed. A custom-made teak pocket door, separating the boat’s companionway from the wheelhouse was destroyed.
“He had cooking knives out and ready to be deployed,” He said. “It looked like Beirut in there. Everything was upturned, topsy-turvy … He had been in the fo’c’sle down below. Everything is gutted and ripped open … panels in the doors … those were all kicked in and things were upended and smashed.”
Reynolds also found drug paraphernalia and remnants of drugs in the boat, which he threw away.
“Anything that’s been touched or opened is going in the garbage,” he said. “It’s like I can’t trust anything. The RCMP have told me, all your bedding – everything has to go – towels, you just don’t know what’s on or in anything. Get rid of it.”
Reynolds said converting the Trend D Foam from a working tug to a houseboat has been a five-year long project and the initial break-in wasn’t detected because the boat’s alarm system was still being installed and not functioning.
Because so much damage was done to custom-built furniture and equipment, Reynolds didn’t have a dollar estimate for repairs, which he’ll likely pay for out of pocket.
“What we have to be very careful of is, if I make a claim or too many claims or if the insurance company deems me unfit to insure, I will lose literally millions of dollars of contracts with B.C. Ferries, Seaspan International, Seaspan Ferries, Amix marine, WCMRC – the oil response teams; we’re prime contractors for all those guys,” he said. “If I can’t carry and prove my $5 million marine ship repairs policy I cannot work on their sites, so I cannot take that chance and do an insurance claim. I’ve gotta suck it up.”
Reynolds said insurers shouldn’t have to be responsible for this kind of vandalism, but also policies should contain a clause that protects policy-holders from being deemed uninsurable under such circumstances.
“As a business person I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” he said. “I have to have the insurance, but if I make a claim, now I’m uninsurable … yet there is no other alternative. I can’t not have it.”
More important than the money, Reynolds said, is protecting the public when people who commit crimes are repeatedly released back onto the streets after their court appearances.
“It’s not about the material things. It’s about protecting the general public and their families,” he said. “It can’t keep happening … People are getting hurt daily.”
On Saturday, Feb. 7, Marcel Alvin Fontaine was arrested again for breach of conditions.