Niagara Crime Stoppers Honors Sandie Bellows with Memorial Award

Former St. Catharines Regional Councilor Sandie Bellows is honored by Niagara Crime Stoppers with a first-ever Memorial Citizen of the Year Award.

Bellows, a former Crime Stoppers board member, died last October after a battle with cancer.

The award will be presented annually to recipients who stand up for justice in the Niagara region and demonstrate outstanding community service and distinguished leadership qualities.

Bellows was serving her first term as a Niagara Region Councilor representing the City of St. Catharines and also President of the Niagara Parks Board at the time of her death.

She also served on St. Catharines City Council from 2014-2018, while volunteering for a number of community organizations.

She has spent most of her professional career in sales and business development, including as a senior account manager at Telus.

Bellows was a public speaker and victims’ rights advocate after her gruesome kidnapping, rape and attempted murder in 1990.

She was 28 when she was kidnapped outside a city credit union, taken to another location, where she was raped and stabbed, but ultimately rescued by a retired OPP officer.

She has been a keynote speaker for numerous government and law enforcement agencies, including conferences for Ontario and Canadian police chiefs, hostage negotiators, victim services, law enforcement agencies. Canadian-American law enforcement, and was invited by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the Victims Bill. Rights ceremony.

The directors of the Niagara Crime Stoppers Board of Directors will call for nominations from across the region each year to choose the individual who will be selected by an independent jury as the recipient of the Crime Stoppers Citizen of the Year Award. of Niagara in memory of Sandie Bellows.