Mark Anthony Louis was brutally beaten and left beside the Kispiox River on the Kispox Rodeo grounds last Thursday night.
Both of his ankles were broken by an unknown number of attackers after he gave a group a requested ride to the rodeo grounds for money, which Louis does frequently.
In the group were two men, who Louis wouldn’t name, but had testified against and recently been released from prison on charges of assault.
Louis never suspected any ill intent until it was too late.
“It wasn’t too long after we all got out of the vehicle that somebody pushed me down from behind,” Louis said. “I remember getting kicked. One of the people kicking me said I stole two months of his life and I got kicked hard in the head.
“I think they were trying to kill me.”
Louis lost consciousness and woke up on the bank of the Kispiox River.
“I was naked from the waist down and couldn’t feel my legs,” Louis said.
He remembers trying to stand and wondering why he wasn’t able to, but managed to drag himself up the bank to relatively flat ground. He still had a considerable distance to go and his vehicle was nowhere in sight.
Louis has been head of security at the Kispiox Valley Rodeo and Kispiox Valley Music Festival and knows the grounds well.
“I don’t know how long it took me to drag myself to the pay phone at the hall,” Louis said. “I don’t remember what I said after I dialed 9-1-1 before I dropped the phone.”
Miraculously, Carrie, Louis’ wife, found him at the rodeo grounds after questioning people in Kispiox Village as to her husband’s whereabouts.
“We pulled up to the hall and I jumped out of the van before it stopped,” Carrie said. “I could see his legs were bleeding and he was shaking badly.”
Mark and Carrie’s children were in the van and Carrie remembers hearing them start screaming when she took off running to her husband.
“They all kept yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy’ — it all happened so fast.”
Carrie and her sister lifted Louis into the van and put a jacket over his legs to help him warm up.
Shortly after leaving the rodeo grounds the van met a RCMP vehicle and, what the family thought was help turned into more trouble, Carrie said.
“The officer spent a lot of time asking for my sister’s license and she doesn’t have one,” Carrie said. “I was trying to get [the officer] to look at Mark, but he wouldn’t.”
Once the officer, who the family doesn’t wish to name either, did get to looking at Louis the family wasn’t impressed with the officer’s conduct, Carrie said.
“[The officer] kept trying to get Mark to talk, but he was puking and shaking so badly that all he could get out was like a growl.”
Paramedics arrived and Carrie alleges the RCMP officer spoke with them for some time and did not seem to be taking the situation very seriously.
“When [the paramedics] finally came over they said Mark was being confrontational and that we were to drive him to the hospital,” Carrie said. “Somehow they changed their minds and got Mark to climb out of the van and that’s when the jacket fell off and they saw his legs.
“Their tune changed right there. It was a nightmare. This whole thing is one big nightmare.”
RCMP are questioning everyone involved and could not be reached for comment before press time.