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“One of them hit me in the face. I went down and then they started kicking me.”

The same thugs tried to steal his 2002 Ford F-250 diesel truck a month earlier, destroying the key barrel and costing $500 to repair.

In addition, Karen’s truck has been broken into twice, costing them $800 each time.

This time, one of the thieves took off on Bugs’s quad and the other two drove away in a sedan.

Owing to the kicks Bugs received on the hip he had replaced in 2014, he was unable to place any weight on his leg for six days.

Bugs Ross’s story isn’t unlike that of Okotoks rancher Edouard Maurice, who woke up in the early morning hours of Feb. 24 to find two suspected thieves rummaging through vehicles on his rural property.

The big difference is who got injured. In Maurice’s case, thankfully it wasn’t him or his family. During that confrontation, shots were fired and Ryan Watson was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound to his arm. He is charged with trespassing by night, theft under $5,000, possession of methamphetamine and failure to comply with probation.

Maurice, a father of young children, just sleeping in his own bed on his own ranch minding his own business before all this happened, is to appear in provincial court again Friday to face charges of aggravated assault, pointing a firearm and careless use of a firearm.

Maurice has become the face of rural Alberta angst and anger over the amount of victimization that has occurred in their once bucolic communities by criminals who know police response times in sprawling, understaffed RCMP detachments can be anywhere from 20 minutes to almost two hours.