Jim DeMarce endured his fair share of punches decades ago when he used to box in the Army but, at 82 years old, he thought those days were long behind him.
Unfortunately, he was mistaken.
Covered from head to toe in bruises, the Penticton Branch 40 Legion president is now showing signs of an attack he didn’t stand a fighting chance against. A crime, he believes, is a sad sign of the times.
“I was on my way home from the legion, up by the library, and there were four gentlemen … sitting around the fountain, and their shopping carts were blocking the sidewalk and I couldn’t get by (on my scooter),” DeMarce said.
“I asked very nicely, ‘Would you gentlemen please move your shopping carts so I can go by?'”
DeMarce said one man got up and said they’d move out of his way, so long as he passed over his money and cigarettes. That’s when events took a turn for the worse.
“I said, ‘That’s not going to happen,’ and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. He smoked me. He hit me. Sucker punched me … then all of them jumped in, all of them, and they were kicking and punching, and I took a beating,” DeMarce said.
The suspects, he said, are largely unrecognizable — all men, possibly in their 40s, bearded and seemingly living on the street. He mostly remembers one had a red broom.
When the attack was done, DeMarce managed to get up and go home and to bed. When his daughter saw a trail of blood in the house they shared the next day, she took him to the emergency room. He has a lot of bruises, but no broken bones. Ultimately, he was sent home with some Tylenol and told to rest.
He said he’s fared pretty well considering, but he’s not sure others in his position would do as well.
“Just be extra cautious when you’re out,” he said.
“You know, call a friend if you want to go for a walk or something at 11:30 p.m. Just don’t be by yourself. It isn’t worth it. It’s a sad thing to say, but it’s the truth.”
DeMarce has yet to report the incident to police because he doesn’t believe anything would come of it. Like a growing number of British Columbians, he says there’s a catch-and-release system in place, where people who commit crimes are arrested, and simply released back into the community to carry on in the same way.
Penticton Coun. Amelia Boultbee is encouraging him to take another tack.
“It is something that has come to our attention in speaking to Mr. DeMarce and speaking to other people, is that some people are not reporting violent crimes to the police,” Boultbee said.
“While I understand their frustration and we need criminal justice reform, we absolutely need people to come forward, file a report, allow the police to conduct an investigation.”
Simply put, Boultbee said if there’s no report made to police, no changes will be made.
“If we don’t have accurate data, nothing can improve. So if you’ve been the victim of a violent crime, please come forward,” she said.
In the meantime, however, she’s focused on supporting DeMarce through what is nothing less than a “shocking crime.”
“To understand that a group of four individuals swarmed an 82-year-old man who’s also a veteran … it’s a particularly appalling crime,” Boultbee said.
Her fellow city councillor James Miller agrees.
He said that DeMarce is a “salt-of-the-earth guy totally dedicated to veterans causes” and the pain inflicted on him was obscene.
“Jim DeMarce is one of the toughest men I know, but that absolutely shouldn’t have happened,” Miller said.
Miller said crimes of this kind should never happen again.
“Our crime numbers do look favourable in a lot of ways, but if people aren’t reporting them, it’s not added to the statistics,” Miller said.
“I would hope that Mr. DeMarce would reconsider (reporting), because he’s experienced a violent assault. What’s to stop the perpetrators from doing it again to maybe somebody who isn’t as physically tough or as in good shape as he is?”