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El Bronco owner says he was ‘sabotaged’ by person who made AHS complaint

Dec 30, 2016 | 4:24 PM

The owner of the El Bronco Motel is speaking out against allegations that he shut off the heat there earlier this month during one of the coldest stretches in recent memory.

On December 7, the Red Cross had to provide housing for nine people of the motel because their rooms were too cold to live in. Now the owner says he has proof he was “sabotaged” by the resident who called in the complaint.

“They’re scamming me,” exclaimed Irvine Pidt Friday morning in his room at the El Bronco Motel. The owner of the motel says the accusation he shut off the heat in an effort to force some tenants out earlier this month is one-hundred per cent false.

“Why in the world would I ever shut the heat off to cost me thousands of dollars?” said Pidt. He says he paid a local plumbing company to fix the heat, and his friend Aaron Johannesson, who’s been helping him ever since the incident happened, says the invoice from the company shows who actually shut it off.

“Room 119,” said Johannesson. “That heating line was deliberately shut off, which a professional company from town found.”

CHAT TV News has seen a copy of the invoice and is not revealing the name of the company who provided service to the motel. But the invoice confirms that someone in room 119 had shut off a valve serving the baseboard heat.

Tamara Hall, the resident who made the complaint to Alberta Health Services that started everything in motion, vehemently denies the claim.

“We did not sabotage it,” said Hall after being asked if that was the case. Hall has since moved out of the El Bronco, but Pidt and Johannesson claim that when she did she severely damaged her unit by ripping out the kitchen’s waterline, which the pair say caused the roof of the motel’s off located right below to cave in.

“The destruction to his (Pidt’s) office downstairs, that’ll be the big cost because we gotta re-tape everything, re-do the whole roof of the suite, because of her neglect and her destruction.”

Hall denies doing any damage to the room. She says the day everything was moved out of the unit she was in the hospital for pneumonia.

“For them to be how they’re being towards me is a bunch of B.S. and if there is any damage up there it was not caused by me,” says Hall.

But Pidt and Johannesson think Hall caused the damage in an attempt to benefit from having the rooms condemned. Johannesson says AHS has recently condemned the unit Hall was living in, and he says the initial allegations made by Hall have had major consequences.

“It’s really hurt Irvine’s business,” he said. “It’s hurt Irvine physically.”

Pidt, who’s 75-years-old, says he plans on retiring soon. He hopes to put this whole situation behind him, and says he’s aiming to have the condemned unit back up to code by the end of January.