‘Sweet and loving person’ or murderer?
B.C. man lynched by mob after death of healer; authorities aren’t sure who is responsible for crime
To his friends on the B.C. coast, Sebastian Woodroffe was a “sweet and loving” person who had set out to help people overcome their addictions.
To members of a remote Indigenous community in Peru’s Amazon rainforest, where Woodroffe had travelled to study hallucinogenic medicines, he was the person responsible for killing a beloved elderly shaman.
These were the difficult-to-reconcile portraits that emerged Monday, just days after Woodroffe, 41, who hailed from the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, was reportedly killed by a mob in a grisly lynching that was captured on cellphone video.
“He was well-loved in the community and he was a sweet and loving person, and … this was very out of character for him,” said Brodie Dawson, an acquaintance of Woodroffe’s, from Cumberland.
Woodroffe’s body was unearthed over the weekend from an unmarked grave where he had been hastily buried, The Associated Press reported. Grainy cellphone video showed a man — apparently Woodroffe — being dragged between thatch-roofed homes by a cord wrapped around his neck as he begged for mercy.
Locals in the jungle region of Ucayali reportedly blamed Woodroffe for the killing of Olivia Arevalo, an octogenarian plant healer and defender of Indigenous rights from the Shipibo-Konibo tribe in northeastern Peru. She had been shot multiple times.
But prosecutors in Peru said Monday it was far from clear who was responsible for Arevalo’s death and that several theories were being investigated, Reuters reported. Arevalo’s family accused Woodroffe of killing her because she wouldn’t give him the hallucinogenic plant brew ayahuasca. But investigators were also looking at the theory that another foreigner might have killed her over an unpaid debt.
Meanwhile, two suspects have
been identified in Woodroffe’s death, Reuters reported.
In 2013, Woodroffe announced in a YouTube video his decision to chart a new career path for himself. After years of catching fish, planting trees and building homes — none of it satisfying — Woodroffe said he was pursuing work as an addictions counsellor after witnessing the intervention of a family member with a drinking problem.
“I’m just totally dedicated to this. This is what I want to make my life’s work,” he said in the video.
Woodroffe explained further in a related crowdfunding page that he planned to travel to Peru to study with a Shipibo plant healer.
Woodroffe said he planned to keep going back to Peru in the hopes of validating this centuries-old approach to healing so that it could be “accepted in mainstream treatment processes.” His long-term goal was to open a detox centre based around plant medicine.
Thousands of tourists visit jungle
lodges in Peru’s Amazon each year to try ayahuasca — a bitter dark-brown liquid brew and powerful hallucinogen made from various plants — in an attempt to heal themselves of depression, alcohol and drug addiction, arthritis, cancer and other ailments, according to a 2016 report in The Guardian.
However, consumption of the brew has also been linked to deaths and episodes of violence. In December 2015, Winnipeg resident Joshua Stevens travelled to an ayahuasca retreat in Peru in the hopes of treating a skin condition. While there, a fellow British tourist, Unais Gomes, had taken a double dose of ayahuasca and then started screaming at the top of his lungs, Stevens later told CTV News.
Gomes allegedly tried to attack Stevens with a butcher knife and
then went after two staff members. Stevens said he felt he had no choice but to stab Gomes, who died a short time later. Authorities released Stevens after concluding he had acted in self-defence.
In a weekend interview with the CBC, Yarrow Willard said his friend Woodroffe had returned from his experiences in South America feeling “troubled” and more distant.
“This man has never had a gun or talked about anything along that line,” he said.
That sentiment was echoed by Woodroffe’s high school friend, Dan Clarke, who said watching the video of Woodroffe being tortured was gut-wrenching. “He was a kind, gentle person who would do anything for anyone at any time if they asked for his help,” Clarke said.
— With files from The Associated Press