Curtis Sagmoen pleads guilty to breaching probation orders after previous assault conviction
Shuswap area man has been convicted multiple times of assaults, threats against women and sex workers
WARNING: This story contains details of violence.
B.C. man Curtis Sagmoen pleaded guilty to breaching probation orders, related to a previous assault conviction, at Vernon Law Courts on Wednesday.
Sagmoen, who lives in the Shuswap area near Vernon and Salmon Arm, has multiple prior convictions for violent crimes against sex trade workers in the area.
He was sentenced to three years of probation and five months jail time in June 2020 for assault causing bodily harm, after the B.C. Supreme Court found he ran into a woman with an ATV on Aug. 10, 2017, flipping her into the air on a rural property.
Those probation conditions included a 10-year firearm ban, that he have no contact with sex workers, and limits on his use of communication devices and the internet.
On Wednesday, however, he pleaded guilty to breaching four of those conditions, out of a total of 14 that he is charged with.
The breaches all occurred in April 2022 and included using a mobile communications device, possessing drugs and breaching a no-contact order.
Sagmoen, who is in his 40s, did not appear in Vernon court Wednesday, with his lawyer entering guilty pleas on his behalf. His next court date is set for Aug. 30.
Long list of violent crimes
Sagmoen has previously been convicted in February 2019 for assaulting a woman in Maple Ridge, east of Vancouver. In December of that year, he was found guilty of pointing a gun at another woman.
In 2018, Sagmoen was handed an absolute discharge after he pleaded guilty to one count of mischief in a case where a spike belt was used to deflate the tires of a woman's vehicle on the Salmon River Road property. Many of the victims of Sagmoen's crimes are protected by court-ordered publication bans.
Later, in October 2020, Vernon North Okanagan RCMP issued a public warning to sex workers in the Okanagan to not respond to solicitations from Sagmoen — which would have been a breach of his court-ordered probation conditions.
In addition to his previous convictions, in October 2017, investigators found the remains of 18-year-old Traci Genereaux, at a farm on Salmon River Road south of Salmon Arm belonging to Sagmoen's parents.
Police said at the time Genereaux's death was suspicious. No charges have been laid in connection with her death and Sagmoen has not been named a suspect.
With files from Brady Strachan and Tom Popyk