How would you feel if you life was shaken upside down in a matter of four weeks?

How would you feel, after living in a nice home for 25 years, making a living, raising your kids, having great neighbours – waking up to oily bear spray on your face, having to escape from your own home to breathe, being treated at the hospital – because of some reason you know nothing about?

How would you like to live in a house in fear of more such incidents without really knowing?

How would like to sit on your chesterfield in the living room knowing that it is soaked in a toxic chemical designed to frighten and incapacitate you?

Lee Ann Wilson, a 59 year old grandmother who works at a real estate company lives at 631 Earle Crescent in an older section of Oliver.

She loves the area, she loves the town, she loves her family and her job.

Lee Ann Wilson does not like notoriety. She is known to the community as a hard working person who cares for her family and her community.

Last month (Saturday August 10th) someone threw a pipe bomb under her small white car and then ran off into the darkness of the night.  It exploded during a thunder and lightening storm and in the morning damage to it was thought to have been a lightening strike. A neighbour took a piece of shrapnel to the police the next day  and the bomb squad from Vancouver was called in by local police on August 13th.

(Saturday September 7th) 4 weeks later – to the day – a young man opened the back door of Lee Ann’s home at 11:45pm and threw a canister of bear spray into the kitchen. The device was taped open so the canister would empty into the house completely for maximum effect. “My dog barked but no lights came on, I open my bedroom door and realized there were toxins in the air”

“My face was burning, I couldn’t swallow, I panicked to get my pets outside, went over to a neighbour for help in getting medical aide”.

Why is this happening?

WHY? Someone doesn’t like you? Someone doesn’t like your 18 year old grandson Jesse?

Jesse Wilson has lived his entire life in that home.

Time will tell on questions of – are these events connected? Or what was the motivation for either event?

Who knows other than the perpetrators.

Lee Ann Wilson wants people to know she will not live in fear – she lives in a friendly town, she has great neighbours and supporters to protect her. She wants the media to respect her privacy …..but she thought it was time to clear the air with the people in her community.

She wants to people to know she is just an ordinary person who has faced extraordinary challenges in the last month.

“I want to thank all the emergency personnel who came to my assistance last Sunday including the police, fire department and ambulance crew that took me to the hospital.”

“My neighbours have been outstanding and supportive”.

On the arrest of a 19 year old Oliver man, Lee Ann Wilson says she was heartbroken to be informed he was a young fellow from a well respected Oliver family.

Some background: The bear spray incident apparently had its roots in a fight that erupted Saturday night up Fairview hill at a bonfire party.

Jesse Wilson was involved in that altercation around 10 pm and punched while he was assisting a friend who was injured.

The name of the person arrested was not given by police and he is scheduled for a first appearance in court Wednesday October 2nd. He was released into the custody of his parents.

Because there is two separate criminal investigations in progress I would ask readers not to comment on this article