MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY — Two county residents who witnessed a speeding SUV that was hauling a sizeable wood chipper when it lost control and rolled over east of Sundre last week recalled observing in disbelief as the driver managed to emerge from the wreckage before turning to plea for help fleeing the scene.
“You could tell he was freaked out,” said Amanda Perkins.
“He kept saying, ‘Get me out of here – can you give me a ride? Get me out of here!’” added Mike Cope.
The common law couple, who the day following the incident on Thursday, Sept. 1 spoke with the Albertan, lives on a rural property just north of the T-intersection at highways 27-22 south toward Cremona. While they are no strangers to seeing police pursuits zoom past or northbound motorists who fail to navigate the intersection end up in a field next to their home, this situation was more exceptional than usual, Perkins said.
But the night of Wednesday, Aug. 31 had otherwise been unfolding much like any other summer's eve.
“Mike had a friend over and we were out in the yard,” Perkins said in response to being asked where and what they were doing at the time of the incident.
Cope and their friend eventually decided to hop into Perkins’ car to drive into Sundre, she said.
But they did not get very far.
The driver and lone occupant of the speeding SUV was headed in an eastbound direction toward the intersection as Cope was just starting to head west into town.
“He didn’t quite get to the intersection before the guy rolled it,” said Perkins, adding Cope “watched the whole thing happen. He pulled the car over and went running to see if everybody was OK.”
Cope said he called emergency services right around 10:30 p.m.
Another adjacent neighbour also rushed out to offer help, she added.
“And then the gentleman that was driving the vehicle got out of the vehicle somehow – and I still don’t even know how – and said, ‘Get me out of here!’” she said.
The couple was not particularly inclined to comply and watched the panicked male attempt to check their yard for another vehicle.
“And then when he seen that we live there, he kind of made a B-line across the highway and ended up going into the trees,” she said.
Describing the male as heavy set weighing perhaps about 90 kilograms (200 pounds) at only roughly 1.7-metres (five-feett, seven-inches) tall with a goatee and short, buzz cut light-coloured, dirty blonde hair and wearing a blue T-shirt as well as black shorts, Cope said nobody else appeared to have been in the vehicle.
“He was alone,” said Cope, adding he attempted to shadow the male for a brief distance.
“I followed him – I don’t know – at least 500 yards down the highway before he ducked into the trees,” said Cope.
“And we won’t go in those trees because we know what’s in there,” quickly added Amanda, referring to a range of wildlife including moose, bears and cougars.
“My neighbour has a few game cameras in the trees, and he’s got pictures of him on the game cam,” said Cope, adding images are directly downloaded to the neighbour’s phone, which later began receiving images of RCMP officers conducting a search of the property’s treed area.
However, the couple said there are in the immediate vicinity any number of hidey-holes. So, the male seemed to have either slipped through the RCMP’s sweep of the area or managed to go unnoticed, with officers clearing out of the scene around 3 a.m., by which point the highway had since been cleared, they said.
“The last time we had spoke to one of the officers, they said they hadn’t got him yet,” said Perkins. “So, it was kind of a nerve-wracking evening.”
As a result, Cope wasn’t quite yet ready to try and catch some Zs.
“I just stayed up in the yard with the lights on,” he said, adding he was up until around 4 a.m.
The following morning, neighbours were calling to check on them.
“We’re a pretty tight community around here. If something happens, we all look out for each other,” he said.
Asked if they had parting thoughts, Perkins said, “We’re just hoping they find the guy.”
Ross Clews, the Sundre Fire Department’s chief, who said he was among the first to arrive at the scene, told the Albertan the following morning that the call came into the hall at 10:32 p.m. and added the standard response – made up of a pumper, a rescue unit as well as the command truck – was dispatched.
“We had three units out there,” he said.
Clews said a vehicle hauling a sizeable trailored wood chipper was in a ditch with the trailered unit still partially obstructing the road.
“Apparently, it was headed I believe east, and then tried turning south at high rate of speed and rolled at the intersection,” he said.
Asked about the status of any injuries potentially sustained by either the motorist or bystanders, Clews said, “Don’t know, never seen the driver.”
So, while an EMS crew arrived along with police, the ambulance did not stay for long.
“There was no patient to transport,” said Clews.
From that point, the situation for the Sundre Fire Department largely became a matter of clean-up and safety.
“It was just basically a traffic control incident we had to deal with because there was no one trapped and the person left the scene,” said Clews.
A couple of witnesses at the scene told the fire Chief what they saw, and had prior to the emergency crews’ arrival been warning other drivers.
“They were on the road waiving people off because the trailer was still halfway on the road,” he said. “They told me that there was two vehicles almost hit the trailer on the road. So, I parked my truck as a barrier with the (emergency) lights on.”
Although a lane was blocked off, the intersection was not completely closed off, he said.
Fortunately, despite a fuel leak from the wood chipper, there were no fires resulting from the crash, he said.
“The trailer was on its side and it was leaking fuel,” he said. “Once the RCMP cleared us, we just rolled it over – winched it back over – so that it would stop leaking fuel.”
Clews remained until the tow truck had cleared the scene, and said he got home at about 12:20 a.m.
Sgt. Trent Sperlie, commander of the Sundre RCMP detachment, said the call reporting the rollover came in about 10:30 p.m.
Reading over the incident's file prepared in part by witness statements, the sergeant confirmed the male driver of the black 2002 GMC Denali walked away from the scene in an eastbound direction along Highway 27 toward Olds before making his way into the trees on the south side of the road.
Witnesses reported the eastbound male had been travelling too fast and failed to negotiate a southbound turn onto Highway 22 when the vehicle rolled, said Sperlie.
Mounties from the Olds, Didsbury and Sundre departments attended alongside Innisfail EMS and Sundre fire, while police dog services out of Red Deer were also involved, he said.
But while air services were also requested, he said no units were available as they were preoccupied on other operations.
Both the SUV and wood chipper were confirmed stolen, he said, adding the SUV also had a stolen licence plate on it.
The sergeant told the Albertan that officers established in the immediate vicinity a containment area as per police protocol, but that the male was not found. Officers remained on scene until about 3:30 a.m., he said.
