Nation-wide alert issued for Yukoner

Police have issued a Canada-wide warrant for the arrest of Yukoner Christopher Schafer after the 33-year-old Old Crow man walked away from his Vancouver halfway house Monday.

Police have issued a Canada-wide warrant for the arrest of Yukoner Christopher Schafer after the 33-year-old Old Crow man walked away from his Vancouver halfway house Monday.

Schafer was living in the halfway house because he has been labelled a long-term offender with a high risk of reoffending after a 2002 attack on two women.

In 2003, he pleaded guilty to breaking and entering and sexual assault with a weapon.

On the night of Sept. 29, 2002, Schafer walked into an unlocked apartment on Fifth Avenue in Whitehorse and attacked the two women he found sleeping there with a knife.

The first woman awoke to find Schafer, completely naked, standing in her room with a 19-centimetre kitchen knife in his hand.

Despite the woman’s efforts to fend off the man, Schafer managed to rip off her pants and underclothes before her friend, who was sleeping next to her, woke up.

The second woman saw Schafer choking her friend. She attacked him, enabling her friend to escape and go for help.

Meanwhile, Schafer dragged the second woman into the living room by her throat, then fled when he realized his first victim was bringing reinforcements.

Both women emerged from the ordeal with bruised and battered bodies, but both had managed to keep Schafer from actually raping them.

“The offence before the court is one of the most serious in our society, short of homicide,” territorial court judge Heino Lilles wrote in his sentencing decision.

“It involves breaking into the apartment of a young woman and the use of both violence and a weapon, a knife, to commit a sexual assault.

“Had one of the women not escaped and called for help, there is no telling what would have happened. It would have been worse, but how much worse would be mere speculation.”

This was the second such crime Schafer had committed. In 1999, he was found guilty of a similar assault in Old Crow.

As Lilles noted when sentencing Schafer in 2003, he had been given a relatively light sentence of two years less a day for the first sexual assault due to his young age (he was 22 at the time), and strong support from his family.

After the second attack, however, Lilles said it was clear from Schafer’s psychological assessment that he was at a very high risk to reoffend.

In the first instance, the judge noted, Schafer had been high on cocaine, but during the second offence, he was relatively sober, with just a 0.04 blood alcohol level.

This, combined with a number of other factors, indicated Schafer’s violent behaviour was escalating, Lilles said.

Schafer was sentenced to five years in prison, followed by five years’ community supervision in a halfway house.

Police are warning anyone who sees Schafer not to approach him, but to call 911 immediately.

Schafer is a first nations man, standing five feet, eight inches tall, weighing 165 pounds with short brown hair and brown eyes, according to police.

He has tattoos on his shoulders and left calf as well as numerous scars on his right knee, right ankle, right elbow and eyebrow.