Curtis Sagmoen faces new charges of assaulting sex worker

Photo: Contributed

Curtis Sagmoen is back in court this week, facing charges of assaulting a sex worker. He had a lengthy trial for a similar incident in December.

There are some parallels between the two cases – both occurred at the same place on Salmon River Road in the North Okanagan, and both involved sex workers.

This incident happened in August 2017, when Sagmoen allegedly invited a sex worker to his farm, and then proceeded to run her over with his ATV.

The victim said she had previously been stood up at the same address. She said she blocked Sagmoen's number on her phone, but he contacted her again.

When she arrived to the address, the woman tried calling the number she was texting to let her through the gate. There was no answer, but the victim said she soon saw Sagmoen driving on an ATV on the property. He let her through, and told her to come down to the creek with him.

She refused, and tried to follow him in her car, but got stuck.

The woman said Sagmoen told her to hop on the back of the quad with him, and she did. After a while, he stopped the vehicle and started fiddling with it.

"I am familiar with quads, and he was definitely pretending that it was broken," the victim testified.

She said Sagmoen told her that he lived in some RVs on the top of the mountain, but that the property owner had recently removed them, and he didn't know where they were.

"That's when I knew for sure something was up," the victim testified. "You're saying you don't know where you live?"

She decided to leave and moved to the side as she heard the motor of the ATV behind her. That's when he hit her square from behind with the quad.

"I luckily didn't lose consciousness," she said. "But I flipped over the quad and broke my tailbone, and had really bad bruises and road rash. I also had a concussion, with a bump the size of an orange on the back of my head."

"He never apologized to me or asked if I was OK," the victim said.

She said she was able to leave when Sagmoen told her he could give her some money from his boss's house across the street. She said she would meet him there, but took off.

The victim did not go to the hospital for her injuries. She also didn't talk to police until a couple weeks after.

When the witness was cross-examined, defence lawyer Lisa Helps noted that the text messages between the victim and Sagmoen were suspiciously deleted. 

The trial continues.