“I have no home,” said Dennis Austin after Judge J. Hunter told him to reappear in Stettler provincial court in two weeks.
Austin, 67, was in court last Thursday, Jan. 9, charged with fi ve counts of uttering threats and mischief after being forcibly removed from his wheelchair accessible trailer Jan. 6 and tossed into the frigid street.
Born with Cerebral Palsy, Austin is a paraplegic and has been confi ned to a wheelchair since he was fi ve. He readily discloses he threatened to kill the RCMP offi cer and sheriff who removed him and his partner, Theresa Rain, 62, from their home.
“I said it,” he said, spitting venom as his face contorted.
“I hate people.”
His view of people is something he has learned over the years.
“No one cares,” he shouted.
He paused. His tense face muscles relaxed and his voice lowered.
“No one ever cares.”
Austin admits he has spent time in prison previously for making similar death threats against people.
“You sit there in prison eight hours in your diaper and no one changes you,” he said. “No one cares.”
Now, the senior couple has no place to call home and aren’t able to access their belongings, including his medications and warmer winter clothing, in the trailer located in Stettler Trailer Park.
“I’m sick about it,” said Austin.
“I’m stuck with no place to live and they won’t let me in. I’m on the street. I have no place to go.”
The trailer was equipped with a lift in the bathroom to enable Austin to get into the tub for a bath.
“I can’t even have a bath now,” he said, adding that he is sitting in his feces stuck to him. “I have no control over my body and they won’t help me. They won’t help us. I got no place to go and I’m in the cold.”
The couple said they paid for their trailer but didn’t realize they also had to pay for pad rent in the trailer park.
They thought once the trailer was paid off that was it and that the landlord was just trying to get more money out of them for the price of the trailer.
“I don’t catch on with legal stuff,” said Austin. “I’m not the smartest person.”
The outstanding pad rent is about $15,000.
Rain admitted the couple has had issues with neighbours and the landlord for the past three years but claimed they were racially motivated against her — a First Nations person — after she moved in with Austin.
Austin agreed saying that is when the problems began.
The owner of the trailer park, Ron Victor, said he gave the couple three years of free pad rent and that there were other issues.
“I sued him for having a pit bull that was attacking other tenants,” he said. “I’m a pretty nice guy. They hardly paid anything on that trailer. I sold it to them for six grand. It’s worth zero right now. It needs cleaning and they wrecked it.”
Victor said the neighbours complained the trailer had cockroaches and the health department was involved.
“It just had to be done,” he said of the eviction.
For a few nights after being evicted, Rain paid one neighbour to put Austin up, but she wasn’t able to stay and was forced to sleep in her vehicle.
“I was frightened I would have carbon monoxide poisoning,” she said, or freeze to death,” she said. “They’re jeopardizing our life.”
Throughout the days while his neighbour was at work, Austin was in the cold maneuvering his wheelchair around town, often getting stuck in the deep snow and relying on either Rain or the kindness of others to help push him out.
As the snow continued to fall while the couple went around town trying to get government help, Rain brushed the moisture off a shivering Austin.
“I’m cold,” he kept saying.
After court last Thursday, the couple went to the Stettler Family and Community Support Services but they were told they couldn’t help unless they exhausted all other means.
They were sent to Alberta Works. At the Alberta Works offi ce, the couple was told to call each of their Assured Income for Severely Handicapped (AISH) workers.
Later that day, they were put up in the Super 8 Hotel by the government until the end of this week.
Const. Russell of the Stettler RCMP said that although the timing was unfortunate, he said they had no choice but to assist the sheriff in the forced eviction because there was a court order.