A man wanted in connection to an alleged armed robbery near Innisfail last week was taken into custody shortly after midnight on June 13 after a massive, nearly six-hour manhunt in Bowden.
A man wanted in connection to an alleged armed robbery near Innisfail last week was taken into custody shortly after midnight on June 13 following a massive, nearly six-hour manhunt in Bowden.
Scores of police, some carrying automatic weapons and wearing camouflage, scoured an area north of Bowden on the evening of June 12 for a man considered armed and dangerous.
Police were searching for Dillon Bristow, 20, of Innisfail, who is facing numerous weapons charges following an alleged attempted robbery at Kelly’s Campground west of Innisfail on June 5.
He was holed up at the Alberta Nurseries and Seeds nursery on Twp. Rd. 344 located adjacent to the junction of highways 2 and 587.
At roughly 6 p.m. Innisfail RCMP received a complaint about a vehicle driving erratically southbound on Highway 2 north of Bowden.
Subsequent investigation by RCMP revealed the vehicle in question had been stolen and was involved in a hit and run incident in Penhold prior to the complaint.
Police located the vehicle abandoned at Highway 587 and Rge. Rd. 11 near Bowden and identified the driver of the stolen vehicle as Bristow.
Police dog services tracked Bristow from the abandoned vehicle to the nursery, police said.
As police considered Bristow to be armed and dangerous, the Calgary Emergency Response Team (ERT) and an RCMP helicopter, which could be seen circling overhead throughout the evening, were deployed.
RCMP secured a perimeter around the nursery and conducted an extensive search of the area.
Access to Highway 2 at its junction with Highway 587 was closed for most of the evening and police were blocking traffic at several intersections near the scene of the search.
THE ARREST
At a media briefing on June 13, Staff Sgt. Chris Matechuk of the Innisfail RCMP said the ERT team ultimately located and apprehended the fugitive in a building at the nursery at about 12:30 a.m. on June 13.
"He was hiding in the building and from then on it went without incident. He did not challenge our members at all. Once he was located by our emergency response team no incident happened. He surrendered at that time," he said. "He was taken into custody by them and immediately turned over to our detachment members and subsequently he was brought back to our office here."
Matechuk said a firearm was located when the police dog service was tracking him into the nursery area but at the time of the arrest the suspect was not armed.
In light of the recent tragedy in New Brunswick, Matechuk was asked by the media if anything in the Bowden operation was handled differently.
"The only thing that concerned me was that we wanted to get the message out to the community to use caution, don’t approach him, and call the police," he said. "We had a good containment of the area. We had no reason to believe he was out of the area. We just wanted the public to know why we were there, and again just to use caution."
Matechuk said the town was not on a formal notice of a lockdown, although access to and from Bowden was heavily restricted.
He added the accused has a history of drug-related crimes.
"He has been very busy in recent weeks. I am just glad he has been apprehended and no harm came to anybody."
He said there is nothing to give him reason to believe the suspect’s alleged crimes were gang-related or linked to organized crime.
Matechuk said in excess of 30 police officers were involved in the apprehension of the fugitive, including the ERT and ALERT teams, police dog service, and members from the Innisfail, Blackfalds, Red Deer and Olds detachments.
On the morning of June 13, the suspect was in custody in Innisfail, with no court date set yet and he was not officially charged as of the afternoon of June 13.
Matechuk said shortly after the operation began in Bowden, the Olds RCMP detachment contacted Bowden mayor Robb Stuart.
"It was just advising him that we were working within the town," said Matechuk. "We then did some releases then to request everybody to use caution and to let everybody know we were working in the area with our helicopter and that we had a pretty heavy police presence there and also locating a place for the media and other staging areas within Bowden."
Stuart and other members of Bowden council had raised concerns about the lack of communication from police with the town at the time when investigators were looking for the suspects from the campground incident in Bowden on June 5 and 6.
Council ultimately agreed to draft letters to the Olds and Innisfail RCMP detachments, as well as RCMP K Division to express such concerns and request information about RCMP communications protocol during such a situation.
THE NURSERY
Cody Berggren, co-owner of the 36-hectare Alberta Nurseries and Seeds, said the suspect was found lying on a shelf with a pillow nearby in the nursery’s mail order processing centre adjacent to the business’ main building.
When he was allowed back into the nursery at about 1:30 a.m., Berggren found that the suspect had attempted to climb into the drop ceiling in a bathroom in the facility’s main building but ended up falling through the tiles.
Berggren said police told him the suspect was injured in the fall.
"Unfortunately for him, he fell through and I think he hurt himself really bad," he said.
There were no signs, however that the suspect had tried to steal anything from the business.
"It was quite surprising, I thought he might have rifled through the place maybe looking for some sets of keys for some of the vehicles that were around here," Berggren said.
The suspect had entered the building through a door in the nursery’s garden centre that had inadvertently been left unlocked when the nursery’s staff went home for the evening.
The suspect locked the door behind him but set off a silent alarm.
It was just after 6 p.m., at about the same time Berggren noticed a police helicopter over the town, that the alarm company called him to say the alarm had been set off.
"With what’s been happening this week, I told them to get hold of the RCMP to come look at it," Berggren said.
He set off for the nursery and met police near the site and informed them of the alarm at the business and then returned to his home in Bowden.
Throughout the evening, as it became clear the suspect was somewhere on the nursery grounds, various police members called Berggren for information about the layout of the buildings on the property.
He said when police were ready to move in, he was called to the police command centre near the junction of highways 2 and 587 to provide more details about the layout of the nursery’s main building.
Police rammed down the front door of the building in order to track down the suspect inside.
It was at the command centre, shortly after midnight, that Berggren received word the suspect was arrested.
"It was great to see that things were resolved safely, that the suspect wasn’t harmed and that no law enforcement agencies were affected as well," he said. "It’s a big relief for the community."
But the hours when police were still looking for the suspect were "disconcerting," Berggren said.
"We’re from small towns and we like to think our small towns are safe and free of some of the other incidences that happen around but it just shows that you always have to be on your guard a little bit. I was just glad that it happened at an afterhours time when there was no staff around."
He added he did think of the "worst case scenario" where if the suspect wasn’t found, or police did not believe he was on the nursery site, he could have been inside when staff showed up the next morning.
"It was a tough night."
Berggren said he commends police for their actions during the manhunt.
He added he knew the father of the suspect and he hopes the suspect will now receive the help he needs.
THE SUSPECTS
Bristow is facing charges of robbery with a firearm, possession of property obtained by crime, possession of a firearm, trafficking cocaine, wearing a disguise with intent to commit an offence, using a firearm in the commission of an offence and failing to comply with a probation order.
Earlier on June 12, police laid criminal charges against Bristow’s alleged accomplice in the incident at the campground.
Michael Holt, 33, of Red Deer, was arrested in Bowden on June 6 without incident and charged the following day with possession of property obtained by crime, possession of cocaine, failing to comply with conditions of an undertaking and failing to comply with a probation order.
He was remanded into custody with his next court appearance scheduled for June 17 in Red Deer for election and plea.
THE BACKGROUND
On June 5, Innisfail RCMP received a call shortly after 7:30 p.m. about an attempted robbery and gunfire at Kelly’s Campground, located 25 kilometres west of Innisfail.
Mounties were told by witnesses at the campground, which is managed by the Innisfail Fish and Game Association, that two men drove into the campground with a yellow truck with black stripes and came "barrelling down the hill" into the campground at high speed and broke through the corded gate.
RCMP learned the vehicle stopped at an RV site with one of the occupants getting out and demanding a vehicle from one of the campers. When the camper refused, one of the men allegedly took out his handgun and fired a shot into the ground near the camper. The suspect then jumped back into the truck and he and his accomplice fled the campground in the same vehicle.
The vehicle used by the suspects, stolen from a rural location near Pine Lake, was located in Bowden shortly after the attempted campground robbery.
At about 11:30 a.m. on June 6, Mounties captured Holt without incident at the Bowden Heritage Rest Area.
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