The man accused of making a hoax phone call to the North Vancouver long-term care home at the centre of one of B.C.’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks has been charged.
The B.C. Prosecution Service confirmed Wednesday that twenty-six-year-old Taymour Aghtai of Vancouver was charged last week with a single count of conveying false information with intent to injure.
North Vancouver arrested and released Aghtai in July.
That month, the Lynn Valley Care Centre revealed it had been targeted with the hoax call in the early morning hours of March 8, which it said appeared to originate from health authorities.
That was just hours after health officials publicly announced the outbreak at the facility — the first at a long-term care home in B.C.
At the time, the care centre said the call “deeply alarmed” staff, some of whom were “reluctant to come to work” as a result.
Staff learned the next day that the call had been a hoax, but the care centre said that “a great deal of harm had already been done to our capacity to provide” care.
In the weeks to come, 79 people would contract COVID-19 at the home and 20 would die.
Aghtai is due in North Vancouver Provincial Court on Oct. 1.