Bus driver who was sucker-punched hopes
new assault charges will mean jail for attacker
Gordon McIntyre, Vancouver Province March 22, 2013
FILE: Bus driver Charles Dixon arrives at BC Provincial Court for the sentencing
of Del Louie in Vancouver. Dixon hopes that Louie will get jail time in his
latest assault charges from a separate incident.
(Photo: Nick Procaylo/PNG)
Charles Dixon still isn’t over it, never will be.
He wound up having to get a letter from his doctor because Coast Mountain twice asked him to remove the sparring headgear, the type an amateur boxer would wear, he dons while driving his bus routes between Metrotown and SFU.
And now the man who sucker-punched the driver two years ago, shattering the 56-year-old’s right orbital bone, is sitting in a jail cell awaiting a court date on Tuesday to face yet more charges of assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon.
“I’m going to show up at court,” Dixon said, for the appearance of Del Louie in provincial court in Vancouver on Tuesday. “No, I’m not surprised at all. I figured it was only a matter of time before he’d do something again to make himself appear in front of a judge.
“But it saddens me that it’s happened.”
Louie avoided jail time for his vicious attack on Dixon in February 2011.
At the Edmonds loop in Burnaby, Dixon noticed Louie get on his bus through the back door.
Dixon politely asked Louie to line up and use the front door like anyone else when Louie, 21 at the time, blindsided him.
Dixon’s son Aaron, 24 at the time, happened to be on-board and ran after Louie, who picked up a broken broom handle and attacked Aaron Dixon with it.
“What hurts the most is the fact that my son witnessed an assault on his father, yet I wasn’t there to protect my son when he was assaulted by Del Louie,” the senior Dixon, a 27-year veteran of transit, said.
It wasn’t Louie’s first altercation with people in uniform.
He’d previously spit in the face of a female bus driver and had also previously spit in the faces of a police officer and a paramedic.
Justice Karen Walker ignored the Crown’s request that Louie be sentenced to jail for nine to 12 months for the attack on Dixon and gave him an 18-month conditional sentence, bearing in mind Louie’s aboriginal background and troubled childhood, ordering that he return to Victoria Wellness Centre in Surrey and obey a curfew.
He also was handed two years of probation once the conditional sentence was up and banned from owning firearms for 10 years.
At the time of sentencing last April, Louie apologized to Dixon, saying he felt ashamed and horrified when he saw photos of Dixon’s shattered, black-and-blue face, that he wished he could undo the harm he’d done.
“I assure you I will never hurt anyone again,” Louie said then.
Dixon required four surgeries to repair his face and had a steel plate and screws put in.
“Del Louie hasn’t got the message to clean up his act, clean up his life,” Dixon, who also has daughters aged 12 and 14, said. “If he’s found guilty, he has to go to jail this time.
“How many more times is the court system going to allow him to walk free?”
Don McLeod, president of CAW local 111, which represents Coast Mountain bus drivers, said other drivers have had encounters with Louie not showing a ticket.
They just let him by, McLeod said, “as they should.”
If Louie is found guilty on Tuesday, the union head said he should be banned from using public transit as part of his sentence.
“Charles will never recover, he’ll never be the same individual he was,” McLeod said.
Updates:
Cowardly punk Del Louie assaults bus driver.
Cowardly but lucky punk Del Louie got off with probation and community service.
A racist justice system protects cowardly punk Del Louie.
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