KAMLOOPS, B.C. — A designated long-term offender who stabbed a 60-year-old woman outside a Kamloops, B.C., hospital has been ordered to live in a halfway house for the foreseeable future.
The Parole Board of Canada has ordered Robert Semchuk to live under seven strict conditions after his prison sentence expired Tuesday.
The board's written decision says the 51-year-old remains at a high risk to re-offend.
Semchuk will be bound by conditions that require him not to consume drugs and alcohol and avoid people involved with criminal activity.
He must also participate in mental-health counselling, take medication as prescribed and avoid contact with any of his victims.
In 2009, a B.C. Supreme Court judge named Semchuk a long-term offender and sentenced him to a nine-year prison term, which was shortened to six years with credit for time served.
The Crown had applied to have Semchuk labelled a dangerous offender, a tag that would have seen him jailed indefinitely.
In 2006, Semchuk attacked and stabbed a woman outside Royal Inland Hospital before fleeing with her purse in a stolen car.
He was arrested following a police pursuit stretching from Kamloops to Merritt to Peachland.
Less than a year after his arrest, Semchuk was charged with assault causing bodily harm for attacking a corrections officer at Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre.
Semchuk was in segregation at the time and the officer was taking the handcuffed prisoner to another area in the jail. After head-butting the guard, Semchuk was tackled by four other officers.
He was handed an additional 18 months in jail for the attack and ordered to spend another 30 days in segregation.
Semchuk had been on parole since March 2013 and living at a Lower Mainland halfway house, where he had two run-ins with his supervisors. In one case, he failed to take his medication and in another he was late returning home.
Parole documents say Semchuk was “warned and counselled" after those incidents.
Authorities will meet to review Semchuk’s progress every three months for the next 10 years.
