RCMP lay charges against man in Beausejour store attack

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This article was published 02/03/2015 (3342 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 24-year-old man from the Beausejour area has been charged with two counts of assault in connection with the beating last Friday night of Tanu and Debasish Mukherjee inside the convenience store they own in Beausejour.

James Richard Payjack is facing charges of assault causing bodily harm, common assault and mischief under $5,000 for his alleged role in the attack that sent the couple, who own Bergie’s convenience store, to hospital.

A man had come into the store that night and was demanding to rent a movie just after 11 p.m. The movie rental machine was already closed because they were closing the store.

After the man first attacked her husband, Tanu tried to intervene. Her nose was broken and she suffered cuts and bruises around her eyes and forehead when the man punched her repeatedly in the face.

RCMP officers arrived almost immediately and the suspect was caught and arrested within 15 minutes.

The couple was taken to hospital in Selkirk, where their injuries were treated. They got back to their home, which is located above the convenience store, around 4 a.m. But they still opened at 7 a.m. Saturday for business, as usual.

“Because we love the community and they love us,” Tanu told the Free Press in an earlier story. “This was just one bad incident. It’s not a true indication of Beausejour. This is our hometown.”

There were racist overtones to the attack, the Free Press was told, as the alleged attacker told the couple, ‘You have to serve me. I’m Canadian. You’re an outsider.’

Well-wishers and supporters from Beausejour, a town of about 3,200, and area have been steadily arriving in the store since the incident to give cards, flowers, hugs to Tanu and to express their outrage over the attack.

Tanu told the Free Press she and her husband feel “proud of our town.”

“We are so lucky. My husband said, ‘When they beat us, we didn’t cry. But the next day, when everyone came, we cried.”

Payjack was released on a promise to appear with conditions and will make his first appearance in Beausejour Provincial Court on April 14.

– with files from Randy Turner