Man charged with harassing Ottawa physician still at large

More than three months after Ottawa police charged a Windsor man in connection with harassing and anti-Semitic calls to an Ottawa family doctor, the man has yet to be arrested.

“Louis Mertzelos remains at large and there is still an active warrant for his arrest,” an Ottawa Police Service spokesman said recently. “We are working closely with the Windsor Police Service in all attempts to locate him.”

The charges, for harassing communication, harassment by repeated communication, mischief and intimidation of health service in connection with phone calls made last September, represented one of the first times a new federal law aimed at protecting health workers was used. The amendments to the Criminal Code created a new intimidation offence to protect health care workers and people seeking health services. They came into effect last year.

At the time, Ottawa family physician and public school board trustee Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, who received the harassing calls, called the arrest warrant precedent setting.

“It is a way of saying that when we do our work, we need to know that somebody has our backs,” she said. “We stepped up, we did all the things that we were asked to do and went above and beyond to really help the community,” she said.

But the charges did not slow the volume of hate being sent to Kaplan-Myrth, who has been a vocal advocate of vaccines and public health measures throughout the pandemic, including in her new role as school board trustee.

This week, she said she is receiving hateful, threatening, anti-Semetic emails on a daily basis from senders or a sender who have new email addresses each time, making it impossible to block and difficult to trace.

She is continuing to send everything she receives to the Ottawa Police Service but they arrive in her email via anonymous encrypted servers making them essentially untraceable.

Even blocking emails from the world’s largest encrypted server, Proton, has not stopped the flow of hate mail, she said.

“There seem to be endless options, all designed to allow a person to harass as much as they wish,” she said.

“It’s unbearable.”

Kaplan-Myrth said she has hired a lawyer to submit Norwich Orders — which are used to assist people in taking legal action against those hiding behind anonymity.

“But is we can’t ultimately trace this, then is it just the reality of medical/political life?”

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