iN VIDEO: High praise for bylaw officers after man refuses to leave Penticton beauty school

PENTICTON – A Penticton business is praising the efforts of the city's bylaw officers for defusing a situation involving an agitated man.

Instructor Leanne O’Grady says it was an eventful end to the workday on Wednesday, Nov. 28, at Penticton’s Okanagan Cosmetology Institute on Main Street in the city's downtown, when a student’s boyfriend informed staff a man had run into the school through the back entrance and locked himself in the washroom.

Hot on his tail were members of the city’s bylaw enforcement team, who had been following the man from Nanaimo Square.

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“They were absolutely incredible,” O’Grady says of the officers. “They contained the situation, got the students out safely and got him out of the bathroom and contained the situation until police arrived.”

She said the dishevelled man appeared to be impaired. She took a video of the encounter between the bylaw officer and the agitated man, which she posted to YouTube.

O'Grady said the school deals with homelessness and addiction issues on an almost daily basis in the summer, but said the conflicts have dropped off with the colder weather.

“They hang out in the back alley, do drugs back there. There’s a pharmacy just up the street where they get methadone, so they frequent the area. It’s alarming, we’re a school and have high school students attending who use the back entrance,” O’Grady says, adding staff has found dirty needles, bloody clothing and even human feces around the back alley entrance.

“The bylaw officers who responded often are the ones who show up. Every time I phone them they are here within five or 10 minutes and get the whole situation under control. They are really incredible."

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