What might have been a fairly straight forward investigation, had we encountered the suspect on the road, was now growing increasingly complex. We had a suspect somewhere on the loose, armed with a handgun that he wasn’t afraid to use, and we had no idea who he was.
We began to let the NCO know what was going on and to bring other members in to help. The other dayshift member came to guard the scene until our Ident (think CSI) member arrived. While Tom started interviewing Trevor back at the detachment I started working on our number one priority, finding, or at least identifying our suspect. I began to systematically searching La Ronge, Air Ronge and the reserves looking for the vehicle, and I let Waskasiu Detachment know, in case he was headed south. Now I actually should have said, almost systematically, for as we were to find out after a couple of hours of searching, the vehicle was abandoned not too far from the scene.
Just before one gets to Nut Point you drive by a small neighbourhood of, maybe, eight houses called McKenzie Point. Around 9:00 o’clock the Staff Sergeant, who had joined the search called to say he’d found the vehicle at MacKenzie Point. On our initial patrol to the scene we looked at MacKenzie Point as we went by, thinking we could see all of it. But the vehicle was parked by the start of a bush trail and was hidden from the road behind a house.
So now we had the stolen car, and another scene for the Ident guy to examine, but still no suspect, and we still had no idea who we were looking for, or where to start looking. We needed to sit down and figure this out, have a look at Trevor’s statement and see if the composite drawing of the suspect was finished.
Two days prior to the incident there had been a few B&E’s in town, and one had stood out from the others. A house and it’s garage had been broken into during the day, and some firearms stolen. Now it always amazes me that some people feel the need to buy a handgun to “protect” themselves. Inevitably it ends up tucked into drawer of a night table. Of course, no one is home when the B&E happens so the thief helps him/herself to the handgun, and a police officer has to put him/herself in harms way to recover it. That is exactly what happened in this case, a .380 cal pistol was taken. In addition to the handgun the culprit stole a pellet gun and a shotgun and some rifles.
Taking the guns into the garage he tried to cut down the shotgun to fit in his jacket, but in what would prove to be significant a couple of days later, he cut his left hand in the process. Angry he smashed the shotgun against the wall, and fired shots with the handgun and a .22. Then he took those two guns, and as much ammunition as he could find and left.
It was of course, the same guy as the guy that stole Trevor’s car at the point of a gun. It looked like he was a one-man crime wave, we just didn’t realize how true that was going to be.
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Your getting good at cliff hangers.
Sounds like a real nutter.