BURST
When Ani Rathore got a call from staff at his Javawocky Coffee House saying Aiden Tye was in his establishment, he knew trouble was brewing.
“It was just like a ticking time bomb,” he said Wednesday.
Tye, 41, has been a longtime terror in the Nanaimo downtown core, with an eight-page ledger on B.C. courts’ online system showing more than 160 charges over the years.
He was convicted for throwing a brick at a four-year-old girl, but striking her 8½-months-pregnant mother in the stomach when she leapt in front of her child to protect her in 2022. The assault was moments after witnesses said he threw coffee on a man in a wheelchair.
In 2023, he was arrested for giving a man oral sex during a family festival in a downtown Nanaimo park, a few weeks after threatening to burn down a Victoria bus station when they wouldn’t sell him a ticket for 25 cents.
In 2024, he pleaded guilty to several charges, including biting a corrections officer — severely enough that the officer missed eight days of work — and throwing hot coffee and soup at other officers. Two other coffee shops aside from Javawocky had also incidents involving physical altercations with Tye.
On Tuesday, Rathore returned to Nanaimo after being out of town for a few weeks. His staff said Tye had been frequenting the coffee shop for days, leaving them on edge and fearing the next blow-up, but he told them to wait until he was back before doing anything.
Upon arriving at Javawocky, Rathore asked Tye to finish his coffee and leave. Tye reacted badly, getting angry and throwing his coffee in Rathore’s face and refusing to leave. While police were called, Rathore pushed Tye outside of the café and locked the doors, while Tye went on a racist rant outside.
“That’s when he started undressing and started making eye contact with the young staff members … and started kind of masturbating,” Rathore said.
“And then he just got down on his knees and started defecating in his own hands … and then smearing everything on the window, and breaking my patio furniture. He started throwing my chairs at the window. I’m just kind of shocked the windows didn’t break.”
Rathore said Tye was arrested, and told by the police he wouldn’t be released before Feb. 3, as Tye is due in court this week for sentencing over the jail guard assault charges. The Nanaimo RCMP confirmed Tye was arrested and is being held, but did not say whether he has been charged for Tuesday’s events.
Kevan Shaw, vice-president of the Nanaimo Area Public Safety Association, has made many public pleas to authorities for help with Tye for years. The NanaimoNewsNow reported that Tye’s numerous mental health issues include borderline personality disorder, autism, ADHD and stimulant use disorder.
Shaw said that Tye was part of ReVOII, a provincial program designed to track repeat violent offenders, but it was no help.
“It’s a nightmare on our streets for law-abiding citizens and even workers in coffee shops,” said Shaw, a former journalist.
“When he was sentenced for the brick throwing, he got seven months in jail and a year’s probation. Well, even the judge said ‘he’s probably going to reoffend, but I can’t hold him in custody forever.’
“Well, why not? You’ve got to protect the rest of us here,” Shaw said. “This is insane. This is insanity at its worst. Aiden Tye is the poster child for it.”
Shaw was critical of the provincial government’s drug decriminalization project, and had his hopes realized Wednesday when B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne announced the pilot project wouldn’t be extended. The project’s exemption to possession laws ends on Jan. 31.
Osborne said the province will shift their strategy towards both voluntary and involuntary treatment options.
“During the decriminalization of drugs, it’s gotten worse and worse to the point it is insanity,” he said of Nanaimo’s drug and mental health problems.
“We knew Aiden was going to lash out again. Luckily, nobody was killed, but soon somebody will be, if we don’t put him in some sort of a complex involuntary care facility — or jail.”
Rathore was glad he could be there to help his staff, many of whom are young women. And he knows he might have to be there again in the future.
Tye “has been in and out of the system quite often. He is not scared of it anymore, because he knows that he’s going to get out,” he said. “If he gets out again, we’re just going to be waiting for him to commit the next offence. He could go out and severely hurt someone, and that’s when we’re going to be like, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t have let him out.’ That’s when we’re going to have regrets.
“We could do something about it now, but we’re gonna wait till he does something bigger to put him away for good. … That just doesn’t make sense to me.”