Penticton and South Okanagan

Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer

Ronald Teneycke arrives at Penticton Court House

An RCMP officer said Wednesday, the woman he was called in to assist  in the IGA parking lot in Okanagan Falls, following a possible sexual assault  on July 31, 2010, appeared to be in a state of shock.

She was just quiet and mellow, staring straight ahead as she sat in his police car, Const. Michael Nelson testified as the Ronald Teneycke trial continued in a Penticton court room.

Teneycke , a high risk sex offender, faces five charges including sexual assault with a weapon and  unlawful confinement, following the alleged incident two summer  ago at an old pump house in the Okanagan Falls area.

Nelson said once he got the call about the assault, he drove to the IGA parking lot from Penticton where he observed three or four youths and an older woman.

The woman came directly to the police car and got in the back. A young female at the scene, who he had been acquainted with in the past, was yelling "don’t listen to her, she's lying," he said.

It was then during a brief conversation with the woman in the police car that he observed her as being really quiet and just staring off into the distance.

After communicating with another officer, they thought the suspect was Teneycke, and he asked the alleged victim to give him directions to the house she had recently left.

After driving on several streets she pointed to Teneycke's  mother's house, which the officer said he was already familiar with.

He went down the street to allow another officer to make contact at the home and drove with the woman to the scene of the alleged rape.

"I told her I'm your taxi driver," he said. "And she told me she was assaulted in a pump house."

The two traveled to a dirt road behind the old Weyerhaeuser mill, where she directed the officer to go to the second cattle guard.

It was pitch black at the location, and he had to turn on his vehicle lights to see, he recalled. By doing so he could see a bit of a ditch, a barb wire fence  and vaguely make out the outline of a building.

From there he took the woman back to the IGA, and she was taken by ambulance to Penticton Regional Hospital. He subsequently transported her to Kelowna General Hospital, where the sexual assault examination was performed.

During cross examination, defence lawyer  Michael Welsh asked the officer what her level of intoxication appeared to be. Nelson replied that she just seemed calm, quiet and kind of sleepy.

In earlier testimony, Wednesday, another police officer described getting  a blood sample from Teneycke for DNA purposes and receiving other exhibits from the forensic lab.

The trial is expected to continue Thursday.