- Joanne Person, 62, was among the 11 people arrested Monday in Coutts, Alberta, near the Montana border, where police seized a huge cache of weapons
- Speaking to DailyMail.com after a two-day stint in jail, Person recounted how cops ransacked two RVs on her property, slammed her onto a car and cuffed her
- The grandmother said she 'was fully in my jammies and in bed' when Canadian Mounties stormed her single-story home just after midnight on Valentine's Day
- The RCMP confirmed they made 11 arrests at the home where they found a large cache of weapons including 13 long guns, handguns, body armor and a machete
- Person, who had been hosting Freedom Convoy protesters - including two trailers - at her property, was charged with mischief and possession of a weapon
- But she claims she has no idea where the firearms came from, noting she only has a .22 caliber rifle used to 'shoot gophers' that police found in her closet
- 'I don't trust the police not to lie,' she said. 'They tried to tell me I've got 16 guns in my home. I don't think for one minute they found those guns here'
- RCMP described the group as a heavily armed criminal organization and said it was preparing to use force against police if they tried to disrupt the blockade
By SHAWN COHEN IN COUTTS, ALBERTA, FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 15:24 EST, 18 February 2022 | UPDATED: 16:12 EST, 18 February 2022
A grandmother with a heart condition who had welcomed Freedom Convoy protesters at her border home, has told how she was violently arrested and jailed in a dramatic police raid.
Joanne Person, 62, said she was in her pajamas falling asleep when Canadian Mounties stormed into her house in Coutts, Alberta, just after midnight Valentine's Day and hauled her off to jail along with 10 other people she was hosting near the border blockade.
Back home after two nights behind bars, the substitute teacher spoke exclusively with DailyMail.com Thursday, describing the horror of being slammed on to a car hood with arms cuffed behind her back, then deprived of her medication in a concrete cell smeared with feces.
She now bears the evidence of being roughly manhandled on her swollen wrist and knuckles, seen in exclusive DailyMail.com photos.
Person now fears a much longer return to jail after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) linked her to an alleged plot to kill cops, seizing a heavy cache of weapons from her property and charging four others with conspiracy to commit murder.
'All I did was try to be a humanitarian,' said Person, who had hosted an array of protesters, including two trailers parked on her yard, just a quarter mile from a border bridge that crosses into Montana.
She sat in the dining room of her single-story home nervously puffing on cigarettes — an old habit she has taken up again following her terrifying ordeal.
'It's absolutely surreal,' she told DailyMail.com. 'I was alone last night and I had to take a sleeping pill. I was sleeping with one eye open, and my ears are large. I have bells hanging on my door because I'm afraid they'll come back.'
Beside her house the two campers still sat on her gravel lot, ransacked by police and unclaimed by the people who were staying in them.
DailyMail.com took exclusive photos inside the recreational vehicles, showing a mattress toppled over and pillows and blankets tossed aside in one of the units that features a kitchen, separate bathroom, running water and lights.
In announcing the arrests Monday, RCMP described the group as a heavily armed criminal organization which was preparing to use force against police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade.
It released a photo of a large weapons cache, stating they'd recovered 13 long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armor, a machete, a large amount of ammunition and high-capacity magazines.
Person said she has no idea where the weapons came from, noting she only has one, a .22 caliber rifle that police found in her closet.
She explained the gun was a gift from her late father and only served one purpose.
'I shoot gophers with it,' she said. 'So does everybody around here.'
Person said her gun wasn't included in the RCMP photo, which she found odd.
She also questioned whether cops had found any of the guns at her property, suspecting it was a 'false flag' operation to discredit Freedom Convoy demonstrators to undermine the ongoing protests over Canada's COVID restrictions.
'I don't trust the police not to lie,' Person said. 'They tried to tell me I've got 16 guns in my home. I don't think for one minute they found those guns here.'
Unlike the United States, where firearms are primarily regulated by individual states, in Canada, firearms are federally regulated.
Some weapons, including automatic weapons, sawed-off shotguns and rifles, and switch blade knives, are 'prohibited weapons.' Other firearms, such as handguns and semi-automatic weapons with short barrels (less than 18 1/2 inches), are 'restricted weapons.'
Of the 11 people arrested, four were being held in jail in Lethbridge, 65 miles away, charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Person, who was charged with mischief and possession of a weapon, was among seven released Tuesday and due back in court on March 15.
Monday's arrests were instrumental in ending the Coutts blockade that had begun on January 29.
'The development with weapons and the personal armor was not associated with us, and to keep that distance we decided to leave peacefully,' Marco Van Huigenbos, one of the Convoy's organizers, said in announcing the decision Tuesday.
On Thursday, Van Huigenbos stopped by Person's home to hear her account.
He too raised doubts about the official version of events.
He said Person had been nothing but helpful to him and other demonstrators who made the tiny village of Coutts (population 224) their home the past couple weeks.
When the Freedom Convoy came to town, Person said, 'It made me hopeful.'
People throughout Alberta drove in to participate, turning her sleepy border community into a new front line in the fight against COVID mandates, which started with truckers paralyzing the nation's capital of Ottawa three weeks ago and spread among ordinary Canadians across the country.
Police started to break up the Ottawa protests Friday.
As a teacher, Person said, she wholeheartedly supports the truckers' cause. She began to cry as she described how children forced to wear masks can't even recognize each other.
'Little kids draw people without the rest of their face, just their eyes,' she said. 'That's disturbing to me that they should grow up in this world.'
She also opposes vaccine mandates, even as most of her relatives have received their shots.
Person believes 'it's a death shot' and claimed the public is 'not getting the true report on how many people are affected by this.'
Throughout the blockade, Person transported pots of soup and groceries to people in the field, drove people around, and let them use her shower and do their laundry.
When the mother of an 11-year-old girl was working at night, Person let the child share her bed when she got sick.
And when a group of out-of-towners needed a place to camp, she said, she let them park their two trailers on her lot.
'The ones I met were all good kids,' she said. 'I barely knew their first names.'
On Super Bowl Sunday, she even welcomed several in to watch the game in her living room.
It was just a few hours later that police rolled in.
Ursula Allred, one of those arrested, was sleeping on the couch. Person was in her bedroom.
Marco Van Huigenbos, one of the protest organizers, said Person had been nothing but helpful to him and other demonstrators who made the tiny village of Coutts their home the past couple weeks.
'I was fully in my jammies and in bed,' she said. 'There were like 20 vehicles with lights flashing and sounding their sirens. I'm like, what the hell is going?'
Police came and presented a search warrant, but it provided no specifics about why they were there.
The warrant, obtained by DailyMail.com, doesn't mention anything about guns or a violent plot, only that authorities believe 'mischief over $5,000' has been committed.
The warrant authorizes a search of the house, trailers and outbuildings, seeking 'documents and data related to planning, organization, and operations of the protest group's security for the Coutts blockade.'
Person said she couldn't even read the form that night, given the darkness and small type, but still cooperated.
'I told them, come in,' she said. 'I turned on all the lights, opened closet doors, and bedroom doors.'
She said police seized her Toshiba laptop computer, iPhone, TV remote control and $450 cash, along with papers from her desk and file cabinet, including school lesson plans for a recent assignment on World War II and Nazi Germany.
She said police were 'rough-handed,' leaving her with bruised wrists from the cuffs, and neck and back pain from being grabbed and shoved.
'I don't trust you not to plant stuff in my house,' Person recalled telling the police at the house.
She said she didn't learn about the guns until hours later.
'When I was in lockup with my interrogator, they tried to tell me they took 16 guns from my house and I went 'bulls**t',' she recalled.
She was placed in a cell she likened to a third world country.
'The blood, snot, fecal matter, spit was everywhere,' she said. 'The floors were filthy. The room was so freezing. I had a mattress that might as well been a table.'
She said she was also suffering from atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat.
'They withheld medication from me for my heart,' she said. 'I was in total AFib in a cold sweat the following day. I was saying I need my medication. They'd say, 'we're working on it, we're working on it.''
She also couldn't sleep.
'I'd stare at the wall until my eyes closed, but they made sure you didn't get sleep there,' she said.
'With the little doors there, they'd kick them shut so hard that it wouldn't latch, then they'd slam it again, and again.'
She initially resisted wearing a mask in the jail but relented after officials threatened to hold her for an additional two weeks.
'They also offered me the jab,' she noted. 'It's like, you can't have your medication, but we can give that shot to you within minutes. I said, 'No, thank you.'
A spokesman for the RCMP Alberta declined to comment when asked about Person's assertions.
She was transferred to another jail before being released Tuesday evening.
'I'm so sore and so tired,' she told DailyMail.com, back home Thursday and planning to get checked by her doctor Friday.
'I'm just so disheartened by what happened and the illegal stuff that was done by the police, and to be convicted in the court of public opinion, in mainstream media. I want to defend myself. I have nothing to hide.'
