An Alberta woman is voicing her frustration after her car’s licence plate was stolen while she was staying in Kamloops. Natalee Bouman was at the Kamloops Best Western Plus hotel on Columbia Street when her licence plate was taken from her vehicle in the early morning hours today, Aug. 7.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Natalie Bouman
August 07, 2020 - 2:27 PM
An Alberta woman is voicing her frustration after her car’s licence plate was stolen while she was staying in Kamloops.
Natalee Bouman was at the Kamloops Best Western Plus hotel on Columbia Street when her licence plate was taken from her vehicle in the early morning hours today, Aug. 7.
Across B.C., those with out-of-province plates have reported harassment, leading to provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry's request that residents treat those with different plates with kindness. There is no evidence Bouman's plate was stolen because it was from Alberta.
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She was on her way home to Medicine Hat from Victoria, where she was in the process of selling a condo, and had been in B.C. for roughly two weeks when she stopped in Kamloops. At around 2:30 a.m. the hotel’s security footage showed a person ripping the Alberta plate from her vehicle and also trying to tear an Alberta plate from a different vehicle, she said.
“I’m from Victoria and living in Alberta, so I have properties in both places,” Bouman said. “We’ve been extremely cautious with sanitization and we actually didn’t run into any trouble until this and when we called the police, the police literally did nothing.”
She said she had the car parked backwards in the stall so the plate wasn't immediately visible.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Without my plate I’m not going to be able to leave (the province) any faster.”
It took four hours to find out how to get a temporary permit from ICBC so she could get home, she said, adding that Alberta insurance companies were not helpful either.
"They told us we had to come to Alberta to get another plate,” she said.
Tim Rogers, general manager of the hotel, said this the first time in two years that a plate has been stolen, and hasn't heard of other incidents of plates being stolen in the city, he said. He hasn't seen an increase in Alberta-related plate thefts during COVID-19.
He noted that customers park in the parking lot at their own risk, and that the hotel did help Bouman connect with ICBC to get a permit.
The Kamloops RCMP could not be reached for comment.
— This story was updated at 9:39 a.m. Aug. 11, 2020 to include a comment from the Best Western hotel.
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