A North Shore resident has had enough of vagrancy in his neighbourhood, after someone threatened him and his dog earlier today.

Jason Burnell says at about 11:30 a.m., he was walking near Schubert Beach close to Richmond Avenue when he asked a vagrant to clean up a huge mess along the beach, in an area where homeless people frequently camp.

“And I said to him, sir, I’m sorry if I got that wrong, but I’m tired of looking at Schubert Beach… And now he’s threatening me with bear spray, and threatening to kill me and my dog.”

Burnell says he didn’t get a lengthy description of the suspect before he fled.

“I was looking after my dog, and I was focused on the bear spray in his hand and the hand behind his back… I know he was riding his bike, he had a backpack and a bag full of food from the dollar store.

“This is the problem; you just ask them to clean up the mess and you get threatened with your life. But I could walk down the street and I could drop my cigarette butt and get charged with littering. So how is this proper?”

Kamloops RCMP Staff Sgt. Sascha Fesenko says police did canvas the area after Burnell called to report the incident, speaking with property owners and other people camped on the beach.

Fesenko says the investigation is active and ongoing.

“There’s uttering threats, that’s one thing we could be looking at. Potentially assault with a weapon, because bear spray is a weapon. Those are generally what we would look at.”

Burnell says he’s on disability because he broke his back at work, and frequently walks along the Rivers Trail at Schubert Beach.

He says he’s cleaned up needles and garbage left from vagrants camping there multiple times, adding he has stopped his dog from eating drug paraphernalia several times as well.

“Why are they allowed to be there all day, and do their drugs, and prostitute and steal things from everybody around them, when everybody else in the community has to walk around on eggshells. Because we pay rent but we don’t have any rights,” he says.

“I was raised in Kamloops, I went to school in Kamloops, I lived here, I’m back here. And this is not the Kamloops I remember. The Kamloops I remember, at 10 years old we could go do whatever we wanted with our friends. We’d leave after school, we’d come home when it’s dark. I wouldn’t even let my 13-year-old girl walk by herself in Kamloops anymore.”