UPDATE: In August 2020, The Canadian Press confirmed a charge in relation to this incident was dismissed against Tieja MacLaughlin in February 2015 under the terms of a plea agreement.

A Kelowna reporter has been charged with felony harassment in Washington State for allegedly threatening to kill her hockey player boyfriend.

Washington State officials announced Thursday 25-year-old Tieja MacLaughlin is charged with one count of felony harassment with domestic violence, with bail set at $50,000.

MacLaughlin was arrested by Kennewick, Wash. police Saturday after allegedly making threats over the phone and sending harassing text messages to her former boyfriend, 19-year-old Jackson Playfair.

According to an affadavit from a deputy prosecuting attorney, MacLaughlin and Playfair were in a "heated argument" over the phone Jan. 17 after he told her he had cheated on her with another girl while he was in Spokane.

That's when MacLaughlin, who has worked as a reporter for TV, newspapers and online news agency Castanet in Kelowna, allegedly began to threaten him, telling him he would be dead by the end of the night.

According to the affadavit, MacLaughlin said she would travel from Kelowna to Washington to see him, allegedly telling him when she did  "it would be the last game of hockey he plays."

Playfair begged with her not to come to the U.S., but the next morning he received texts from her that she was in the Tri-Cities area and that's when he became seriously worried for his safety and contacted police, the affadavit said.

Officers located and spoke with the woman that day. She denied threatening to kill Playfair, but did not arrest her, and she agreed to leave Playfair alone and head back home.

“Unfortunately, over the next several hours she just bombarded the young man with a massive amount of text messages trying to get him to meet her,” KPD spokesman Mike Blatman said Wednesday.

Playfair again contacted police, who then took MacLaughlin into custody at the Kennewick hotel she was staying at on Jan. 18.

He and his team, the Tri-City Americans, aren’t commenting on the alleged threats.

Playfair said he had been in a relationship with MacLaughlin since July but that it had been “rocky” at times, according to the police report.

The left-winger is the son of Phoenix Coyotes associate coach Jim Playfair.

Trevor Rockliffe, who runs Okanagan news agency Castanet, said the sometimes-sports reporter had worked as a freelancer for the website until Jan. 12.

MacLaughlin will answer to the charges in a Kennewick courtroom Friday at 1 p.m.

With files from CTV British Columbia's Kent Molgat