An early morning incident on Highway 20 south of the community resulted in a Rimbey RCMP cruiser being heavily damaged and the officer behind the wheel receiving treatment for minor injuries.
After seeing a vehicle parked directly in front of the Fas Gas Service Station in Rimbey, Cst. Daniel Kenny pulled in to inform the driver that the station was closed and to direct the driver to one that was open.
However upon noticing the police, the operator drove away without any contact and headed towards the highway. Once there, the truck sped up significantly and the RCMP began the pursuit.
“In a very, very short period of time the truck was up to an extremely high rate of speed – approximately 180 kilometres per hour,” said Cpl. Ian McLean of the Rimbey RCMP. “Our member had called for assistance already and a supervisor’s guidance, which we do. It’s a high-adrenaline situation and it’s nice to have someone with some experience there to assist on those kind of decisions.”
McLean said the truck stopped very quickly with Officer Kenny stopping three or four car-lengths behind and radioing in that the vehicle had stopped and to run a check on the vehicle’s license plates.
“The vehicle suddenly went into reverse and rammed him. It was the rear-right corner of the truck,” McLean said. “Actually, as it struck the police car a wheel drove right up onto the hood and onto the windshield. As it got up onto the roof, it fell off sideways down the driver’s door and the truck carried on past him going backwards.”
From there, the truck kept moving backwards for a fairly long distance behind the now disabled police car. The operator then dropped it into forward gear and took another run at the cruiser.
“Then he drove directly into the rear right side of the police car. The truck struck him so hard that it turned the police car 180 degrees and across the highway about 20 to 25 yards down the road,” McLean said. “The front of the police car was on the shoulder and the rear was in the ditch, but now he’s facing north.”
Due to the impacts, Kenny was unable to exit the vehicle and had to sit and watch as the truck, now facing the car head on, rammed it a third time before fleeing the scene and continuing south on the highway.
In hindsight, it’s probably very fortunate for Kenny that he stayed inside his car before the first ramming incident.
“There is a brief time in there where we’ll call in to say the vehicle has stopped. There’s usually a couple of minutes that officers use to get a verification from the radio room that the officer has stopped a vehicle and the license plates are called in,” McLean added. “That little bit of time afforded him not to jump out of the car right away or it could have been much worse.”
McLean said Kenny was wearing his seatbelt, which most likely prevented him from being injured worse than he was and that it is both the law, and RCMP policy to remain buckled up until actually exiting the vehicle.
Despite the ordeal, he said Kenny should make a full recovery however he added that he was walking a bit gingerly following the incident.
“He’s going to be off work for a few days,” McLean said. “He was treated and released but he’s in good physical condition so we’re hoping that he’ll heal up really quickly.”
But the story doesn’t necessarily end there – at least not yet.
Approximately 12 hours later, an outbuilding located at Poulsen’s Pasture mysteriously caught fire and was completely destroyed. In a coincidence that borders on the absurd, the outbuilding was located directly across Highway 771 from where the RCMP finally found the truck involved in the ramming incident earlier that day.
“A police service dog was called out and picked up a trail. We did a house-to-house search, we woke everybody up in the sub-division, checked all the outbuildings but we were unable to find anyone at the time,” McLean said.
“We do know that the suspect was in that sub-division but he wasn’t located. So at this point we have, what we believe is a male subject who is at large. We’ve been following up on all the forensics and any information we have will add to the investigation,” he added. “It’s considered a more serious investigation now – not because a police officer was involved, but it was elevated from a property crime to a very serious crime of violence. Now it’s an assault with a weapon and we believe we’re dealing with a very dangerous individual at this time.”
McLean suggested that the charges may be further elevated depending on what forensic evidence and motives reveal and could even rise to an attempted murder.
“It is not out of the realm but at this point in time, we’re investigating the crime for what it is,” he said. “At the present time we’re keeping a wide spectrum on the incident and we’re investigating the fire as suspicious and we’ll see where the evidence leads us.”
McLean said the RCMP does not jump to any pre-conclusions and read the evidence for what it is, but they do acknowledge that anything is possible, even that the two incidents may be related.
We’re born to be suspicious. That’s why we become police officers,” he said. “Of course, we cannot close our minds to anything like that. But on the same token, in any investigation we have to read the evidence as what it is and not make it fit into what we want it to be or how we perceive it. At this point in time we’re keeping all avenues open and we certainly aren’t going to confirm or eliminate the possibility that one is related to the other.”
McLean took the time to thank the other emergency services that were on the scene at both the fire and on the highway where the rammings took place and to all the citizens who contacted the Detachment with well wishes for the injured officer.
“We owe them a big gratitude,” he said of the Rimbey Fire Department, EMS and tow truck operator. “They did an excellent job for us in securing the scene and helping us secure evidence. That freed up all the members with the exception of myself and Constable Kenny, to conduct a search for the truck.
“For every person that we run into like that, there’s a hundred concerned ones and we’ve had lots of people that called who were genuinely concerned about the member’s health and making sure everything’s okay. Of course, you can’t measure how much we really appreciate that,” McLean added.
While investigations into both incidents are continuing, McLean said any assistance from the public would be greatly appreciated especially in light of the violent nature of the rammings and because the suspect is, most likely, very dangerous.
“If there is anybody that happened to see a grayish-green coloured 2006 Ford F350 operating between here and Red Deer on that Saturday night or an occupant, it would be of great assistance to us if they called the nearest RCMP Detachment,” he said.