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A would-be carjacker just released from police custody on Tuesday made a couple of wrong choices in his attempt.
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Firstly, he didn’t count on the victim being an off-duty police officer. The other reason had more to do with the vehicle he attempted to steal.
“I’ll tell you this: It’s probably one of the best theft deterrent systems a vehicle can have — it had a manual transmission and the person who tried to make off with it couldn’t operate it,” Claude Chancy, a Winnipeg Police Service spokesman, said Wednesday during a press conference.
He said the off-duty officer was flagged down at about 4:15 p.m. in the 100 block of Smith Street, a few blocks from WPS headquarters, by a man pretending to be in distress.
The man opened the driver’s side door and physically assaulted the driver in the upper body.
“The officer immediately identified himself as an off-duty police officer as the suspect continued to assault him and attempted to pull him out of the vehicle while threatening to kill him,” Chancy said.
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The officer exited the vehicle, while the man attempted to flee on foot after he was unable to drive stick.
“It just happens that we had some other off-duty police officers in the area that were able to see what was going on and, as they would for any other citizen, jumped in and helped out to help arrest this particular person,” Chancy said. “And I have to tell you this is a person that is over six feet tall, over 260 pounds, so we’re not dealing with a small man here. They had their hands full.”
The 27-year-old suspect had been brought in to WPS headquarters on probation-related warrants and released about 20 minutes before the incident. He has been charged with robbery, assault police officer, uttering threats – cause death or bodily harm, and fail to comply with a probation order. He was detained in custody.
The officer later sought medical attention for multiple minor upper-body injuries, police said.
kevin.king@kleinmedia.ca
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